Wilderness Tips - Examination & Analysis
Use period one to continue the story draft you started last class. Use your time to develop your ideas, theme, work on plot, character development, setting, and other aspects of your fiction writing. Remember, your story should include the following:
Wilderness Tips is Margaret Atwood’s second volume of short stories (Bluebeard’s Egg and Other Stories (1987) is the first.) Wilderness Tips as a collection uses a familiar contemporary urban setting for most of its stories. Themes for the short stories include an emphasis on gender and sexual power in traditional heteronormative relationships. Themes of sex, survival, loss, and discovery (both psychological discovery, as well as physical discovery) can be uncovered if the reader flips over a few rocks as they read. Repeated motifs of landscapes or nature-scapes, pregnancy, abortion, creation and finding one's own inner-truth to happiness and freedom (often sexual freedom) litter the pages of the collection.
“Hairball,” the second story in the collection, for example, introduces us to a protagonist who gives “life” and identity to her lover (who then replaces her as editor). As Kat undergoes surgery for the removal of an ovarian cyst, an ironic parallel to the “birth” she has given her lover, Ger, she exacts her revenge for his betrayal by sending the “hairball” cyst to Gerald and his wife as a gift.
In “Isis in Darkness,” Atwood alludes to Isis, the fertility and creator goddess. Equating Isis with all women (having the capability and power to create life), the male protagonist of the story is a failed poet and pedantic academic. When he comes to understand that he is no Osiris (counterpart and companion to Isis) but only a pathetic academic and “archaeologist,” (motif of discovery) who exploits creativity to advance his own career, he is ruined.
“Bog Man,” also involves a male archaeologist who discovers the body of a man preserved in a bog. Connor's assistant, a young female student, romantically involved assistant, looks up in awe at him. Connor, the academic, seems superhuman at first but is then viewed as inferior to the bog man, whom he physically resembles. Early in the story, she suspects that her lover is “molding her mind,” but after their relationship ends, she molds and shapes him. Similar to the character development in "Hairball."
In “Death by Landscape,” the protagonist Lois molds and shapes her reality by re-creating the paintings that hang on her walls. The artistic landscapes mirror her mental landscapes. She is haunted by the disappearance of her childhood friend, Lucy.
- Write a draft that includes a flashback.
- Consider an urban setting, but at some point in your story, move to a more natural setting. The setting should reflect the inner conflicts of your protagonist if possible.
- Avoid character cliches: surprise your reader (and possibly yourself or even your character)
- Include a secondary character who should act as a foil to the protagonist.
- Write in present tense; (flashbacks can be written in past tense); Use 3rd person POV (limited, omniscient, objective).
See the previous post for more details.
Period 2: Let's discuss what we've read so far in the collection.
Wilderness Tips is Margaret Atwood’s second volume of short stories (Bluebeard’s Egg and Other Stories (1987) is the first.) Wilderness Tips as a collection uses a familiar contemporary urban setting for most of its stories. Themes for the short stories include an emphasis on gender and sexual power in traditional heteronormative relationships. Themes of sex, survival, loss, and discovery (both psychological discovery, as well as physical discovery) can be uncovered if the reader flips over a few rocks as they read. Repeated motifs of landscapes or nature-scapes, pregnancy, abortion, creation and finding one's own inner-truth to happiness and freedom (often sexual freedom) litter the pages of the collection.
The urban setting (as good settings do) metaphorically equates to a "wilderness" in which the characters must "survive". Each story, then, attempts to answer: how do we survive in the jungles and forests of our relationships with the opposite sex and find fulfillment through our contemporary urban lifestyles? Survival in such a wilderness seems tenuous and uncertain in Atwood's stories.
“Hairball,” the second story in the collection, for example, introduces us to a protagonist who gives “life” and identity to her lover (who then replaces her as editor). As Kat undergoes surgery for the removal of an ovarian cyst, an ironic parallel to the “birth” she has given her lover, Ger, she exacts her revenge for his betrayal by sending the “hairball” cyst to Gerald and his wife as a gift.
In “Isis in Darkness,” Atwood alludes to Isis, the fertility and creator goddess. Equating Isis with all women (having the capability and power to create life), the male protagonist of the story is a failed poet and pedantic academic. When he comes to understand that he is no Osiris (counterpart and companion to Isis) but only a pathetic academic and “archaeologist,” (motif of discovery) who exploits creativity to advance his own career, he is ruined.
“Bog Man,” also involves a male archaeologist who discovers the body of a man preserved in a bog. Connor's assistant, a young female student, romantically involved assistant, looks up in awe at him. Connor, the academic, seems superhuman at first but is then viewed as inferior to the bog man, whom he physically resembles. Early in the story, she suspects that her lover is “molding her mind,” but after their relationship ends, she molds and shapes him. Similar to the character development in "Hairball."
In “Death by Landscape,” the protagonist Lois molds and shapes her reality by re-creating the paintings that hang on her walls. The artistic landscapes mirror her mental landscapes. She is haunted by the disappearance of her childhood friend, Lucy.
With the rest of period 2, we will read and discuss the titular short story "Wilderness Tips".
HOMEWORK: Please read "The Age of Lead" and "Weight". Continue and possibly complete your short story draft.
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