On The Theme Of Survival In Margaret Atwood's Surfacing

In her works, Atwood not only concerns over the plight of women in a society dominated by patriarchic ideas, but also over Canada as a country against cultural colonialism and the discordance between the natural world and modern materially -oriented human civilization. These three concerns are often closely united by the same theme--" survival", which is also the recurring theme in Atwood's literary creations.Like many Canadian writers, Atwood often relates Canada and women together. Moreover, women have many affinities with nature. Atwood's second novel Surfacing (1972) is a good example to be studied from diverse perspectives. This dissertation aims at making a detailed analysis of the survival theme in Surfacing, mainly from the perspectives of post-colonialism, feminism and ecocriticism. My dissertation is not to narrow the scope of the original work of Atwood in light of a particular approach, nor to expand Atwood's texts for the scale of one given theory, but in the hope of gaining a view of Atwood's survival theme from three different angles and find a way to better understanding of Atwood's early novel--Surfacing.