A Study On The Uncanny In Margaret Atwood’s Novel The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood,honored as the "Queen of Canadian literature",is an outstanding writer in the Canadian literary circle,also enjoying a high reputation in the international literary circle.Most of her works represent the central theme of"survival".The novel The Blind Assassin is her reflection on the survival dilemmas of women.In this book,Atwood depicts the fear and anxiety of the protagonist Iris,and reveals social factors related to them,reflecting her concerns for women issues.There are few critical works interpreting The Blind Assassin with psychoanalysis at home and abroad,fewer about the uncanny of the protagonist in the novel.The uncanny is a feeling of frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar,and it can also be called "return or recurrence of the repressed" or "repetition compulsion".Based on the theory of the uncanny,this thesis elaborates on the uncanny contained in The Blind Assassin with the discussion of its representations,underlying causes and results,aiming to find out the relationships between individual psychologies and social factors.This thesis includes five chapters:the introduction,three chapters of the argumentation,and the conclusion.Chapter One is the introduction,which mainly elaborates on the author Margaret Atwood’s life,her literary achievements,the basic information of her work The Blind Assassin,and the research status at home and abroad.It will also sort out Freud’s uncanny theory,as well as the structure and research significance of the thesis.Chapter Two to Chapter Four is the main body of the thesis.Chapter Two analyzes the recurrence of the repressed in Iris,elucidating the different forms of Iris’s uncanny.Chapter Three elaborates on the underlying causes of Iris’s uncanny from three aspects of male,female and society,aiming to explain the relationship between individual psychology and social factor.And Chapter Four discusses Iris’s efforts to release her uncanny feelings and change her survival dilemmas.In this process,Iris releases her uncanny to varying degrees and re-establishes connections with others.Chapter Five is the conclusion of the thesis.The above analyses reveal that The Blind Assassin seems to be an uncanny narrative of a personal story,but the book exposes the oppression of women by patriarchy,consumerism and capitalism in Canadian society,and explores effective ways to rebuild women’s self-identities as well.By interpreting the novel with the uncanny theory,the protagonist’s fate can be better understood with the combination of individual psychology and social condition in The Blind Assassin,so as to more intuitively understand the female survival dilemmas and arouse the attention of society.