Canada's relationship to the United States in Margaret Atwood's Surfacing

Canadian Nationalism & Margaret Atwood

Canada's Relationship to the U.S. Vis-a-Vis Margaret Atwood's Surfacing

For Americans or Europeans who are oblivious to the justifiably pessimistic feelings many Canadians have toward the U.S. In particular and Western attitudes in general, reading Margaret Atwood's book Surfacing should serve as enlightenment. And if readers rationalize that Atwood's work is fictional so it probably isn't representative of how Canadians truly feel about their neighbors to the south - those readers would be, at some level wrong. Indeed, Atwood's is a critically acclaimed and brilliant novel which weaves Canadian nationalism themes, universal feministic themes - and strong ecological consciousness - into an appealing dramatic tapestry of drama and conflict. Meantime, this paper's task is to flush out metaphors deep in the heart of this book that aren't generally discussed by scholars and critics.

This paper reviews and analyzes Atwood's book (and scholarly journal articles about the book) from the broader point-of-view of nationalism and with special attention to her powerful environmental and feministic themes - and why those themes become metaphors - along with the personal rage evident when conflicting family and relationship dynamics come into play. The novel "moves from the plain perceptions of the opening chapters into the knife edge of madness and fantasy..." according to Christina Newman ("In Search of a Native Tongue [Surfacing]"); and reading it is a dip into the cutting edge of a creative writer's view of Canadian nationalism.

How Canadians View themselves and the United States:

An examination of the political, economic and cultural relationship between Canada and the United States - from the Canadian point-of-view, in all its colorful intensity - is presented by professor James Tagg in the journal, The History Teacher ("And, We Burned Down the White House, Too": American History, Canadian Undergraduates, and Nationalism"). Tagg, an American professor of History teaching at The University of Lethbridge in Alberta, writes that Canadian students (in general) "...are offended by the patronizing and condescending attitudes of Americans" and they "dislike the vulgar materialism of American society."

Moreover, Tagg has witnessed on numerous occasions the "scorn" Canadian students feel towards the "dumb-downed American culture"; and Canadians are "uncomfortable with the too familiar, too up-beat, too in-your-face candor of many Americans," he claims. Indeed, a "plethora of negatively perceived elements" of American history "always linger on their historical horizons," Tagg explains, in particular issues like Vietnam, the "recurring ironies of so-called 'free trade,' and the two wars on Iraq."

Tagg goes on to describe the "guarded feelings" of Canadian students as framed by what they see as American "...ignorance and self-righteousness." They are intolerant of "American ignorance of, and [disinterest] in, Canada," as well, he says. And if that isn't a sufficient enough list of dislikes, Tagg says that some Canadians he has come into contact with in conversations abhor "American political, economic, and cultural 'imperialism'."

Beyond the litany of things Canadian young people apparently dislike about America and Americans, Tagg there is a "...still more profound yet not always well articulated fear that Canadian culture, and likely Canadian sovereignty, will be overwhelmed by a United States too ignorant and too uninterested to even notice the consequences of their actions." And when Canadian students sign up for Tagg's American history classes, many "carry the baggage of Canadian nationalist emotions," and those emotions can be discomforting for a professor, Tagg implies.

That said, it is also true that Canadians "...enthusiastically embrace good trade relations" with the U.S., and they have "a seemingly endless appetite for American popular culture," according to Tagg. They also "admire American energy" and they look favorably upon "...most of the principles of civic governance" in America. Still, Tagg warns, none of the "positive" feelings Canadians have for America can "override the necessity most Canadians feel for upholding their own cultural and national identity."

In the view of Professor Sharon Anne Cook (Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa) the resentment Canadians feel towards the U.S. is not as severe as Tagg suggests; indeed, Cook writes that the education establishment has tried to downplay patriotism and nationalism. High school educators, for example, are careful not to use history classes as a platform with which to promote patriotism because they have a "suspicion toward the extremes of propaganda" (Cook 2006).

Writing in Phi Delta Kappan, Cook reports educators' concern that "combining historical and civics education in the same curriculum would increase the propagandistic potential of history and social studies courses to an unacceptable level." And rather than "promoting explicit patriotism," she explains, patriotism which can easily emerge into nationalism, "Canadian curricula have typically celebrated out pride in democratic institutions."

That having been said, it is also true (according to Cook) that Canadians' national aspirations include "a tradition of populism that encompasses environmentalism and peaceful dispute resolution; health care for everyone; public life grounded in an ethic of fairness, honesty, and plain hard work rather than glitz and glitter." Several of those concepts are diametrically opposite to what Canadians who are reading newspapers and watching news channels are now witnessing in America, and those concepts may very well have crept into the consciousness of alert young (or middle aged or old) Canadians; and as such, those contrasts between U.S. And Canadian values could indeed provide fodder for the generalized but real sense of Canadian discomfort with the arrogant bully neighbor south of their border.

To wit, "environmentalism" is not something Canadians see Americans doing very well (in particular, the current U.S. president rejects scientific data on global warming while Canada has indeed signed on to the Kyoto Protocol); "health care for everyone" is desirous in the U.S. But politically unworkable; the idea of "peaceful dispute resolution" is an anathema to the current executive branch's "war on terrorism" (think Iraq, prisoner torture, Geneva Accords being re-written); and "hard work rather than glitz and glitter" goes contrary to the American obsession with the glitter of Hollywood, the glitz of "American Idol"-themed entertainment, and baseball players earning $18 million a year to hit a little white ball over the fence.

Surfacing - Looking Closely at the Novel's Feminism, Nationalism & Guilt close examination of Atwood's nameless protagonist / narrator and the narrator's sometimes wild, sometimes child-like but often feminist-themed observations gives the impression to a reader that the narrator herself just might be Atwood's metaphor for Canada the nation. A novel this rich, with anti-Americanism and Canadian nationalism lurking around every corner, with haunting images, ecologically glorious settings and ongoing mysteries naturally brings creative thoughts to the minds of Atwood readers who are doing more and going further than simply paying attention in order to write a "report."

And since it is no secret that Atwood the person gives the impression of being a strong-willed Canadian first, a writer second - and what ranks third is up to critics, readers, and history - therein exists an open-ended possibility that the narrator is indeed the swimming, swirling, churning, confused and conflicted spirit of Canada (as Atwood sees it).

Further, the guilt the narrator feels could be a metaphor for the guilt Canada has for the mistreatment (in many cases) of its native peoples; and the metaphor could quite possibly reflect the burden of guilt on the Canadian national consciousness for the earlier Canadian playing out of America's imperialistic "Manifest Destiny"; professor Sharon Anne Cook points to that issue in her aforementioned article, quoted in part below:

In the early 20th Century," Cook writes, "Canadian schoolchildren were challenged, as one textbook of 1910 put it, to civilize 'a vast solitude of uncultivated plains, unbroken forests, and lonely mountains' by using...British values." That point by Cook is mentioned here even though more modern textbooks and teachers have preached environmental respect and responsibility; still, there is the lingering sense of regret in the literature of Canada's history that has a familiarity when reading Atwood's novel. And moreover, the word "civilize" rings familiar to readers of Surfacing, because to become "civilized" means, in the narrator's view, being too much like an American.

On page 43 (this paper references the paperback edition of the novel, "First Anchor Books Edition, June 1998") the narrator is searching for her missing father, and she passes "gigantic stumps, level and saw-cut, remnants of the trees that were here before the district was logged out." She is saddened by the fact that "The trees will never be allowed to grow that tall again, they're killed as soon as they're valuable, big trees are scarce as whales." Indeed, the narrator uses "killed" rather than "cut down" - for graphic emphasis of her rage at the loss of innocence - and she sees the Canadian wilderness on an endangered species list, like whales.

Being "civilized" also means perhaps being capable of the wanton killing of a heron, which was found hanging with a rope around its neck, and which the narrator assumes was the work of an American; David sees it as an appropriate addition to his amateur movie, "Random Samples." The narrator herself feels some cultural sense of guilt knowing she benefits from land that was basically taken away from aboriginals by her forbearers.

And "civilized" also means being corrupted by rampant economic temptations and in the process, ruining the land; and the narrator goes to great lengths to show that she "...wishes to not be human," which is a linking of "guilt and self-knowledge," according to Janice Fiamengo's essay (in The American Review of Canadian Studies). Essayist Fiamengo quotes Atwood from a 1972 interview (Surfacing was published in 1972) in which the author says that if "you define yourself as intrinsically innocent...then you have a lot of problems, because in fact you aren't." The narrator wishes "...to be not human," Atwood said, "because being human inevitably involves being guilty."

She's not likely saying that we're all guilty due to "original sin," but rather because we as the human race bear the responsibility for the misbehavior and inhumanity of those who came before us, such as the Europeans who "conquered" North America and while doing so slaughtered untold thousands of natives and drove a dagger into the heart of their aboriginal culture.

And, Fiamengo goes on, "What is the source of this guilt?" Indeed, given that there are myriad "...provocative and theoretically sophisticated" - and deep - psychological studies of Surfacing, still, the narrator's guilt "remains under-examined, with critics content to assume that it stems from her abortion, a resolvable moral and textual problem." Or, Fiamengo asks, do critics see the guilt in Atwood's Surfacing "...as part of the human condition generally?" Yes, Fiamengo continues, the connection has been made "between the narrator's personal journey and Canada's postcolonial anxieties," but scholars "have not always recognized the complexity of Atwood's representation of the national psyche."

From a different perspective, Cook expresses the thought that the Canadian psyche is wrapped up in "the immensity of the land, the husbanding of resources"; and part of that psyche is a response to the traditional portrayal of Canada as "the junior partner, first to Britain, then to the United States - a willing partner, to be sure - but deferring to those with access to more resources, larger populations, greater appetites.")

While not necessarily bolstering this reader's argument that the narrator herself - not the novel necessarily - is a metaphor for Canada and the concerned consciousness that fuels a sense of guilt in the more sensitive souls, Fiamengo goes into the question of guilt produced by the exploitation of Native peoples and resources. Guilt usually piggybacks on some kind of denial. David, a friend of the narrator's lover Joe, is in denial. David is perfectly willing to point the finger at American history and remind all, Fiamengo writes (Fiamengo 143), as to how "the black slave's unpaid labor" was the source of American prosperity. But "he does not acknowledge the exploitation of native peoples and resources as the root of the Canadian economy."

Even the narrator at this point seems to get into the denial act - or she is just mimicking the attitudes of early European interlopers into wild Canada? - as she explains that her father's move back to the boondocks of Canada sounds like the early settlers from Europe, who, Fiamengo quotes the narrator as saying, "...arrived when there was nothing but forest and no ideologies but the ones they brought with them."

In other words, the native peoples were empty of thoughts, desires and opinions? That would appear to be condescension personified. And continuing on with an examination of guilt, Surfacing was published in 1972, just three years after iconoclastic Canadian Harold Cardinal's book, The Unjust Society; Cardinal's book was, Fiamengo writes, "a direct rebuttal to [former Prime Minister] Pierre Trudeau's slogan of the 'Just Society.'" Indeed, in his book Cardinal "documented government failure to honor its treaty obligations and to recognize aboriginal rights," according to Fiamengo, who alludes to Cardinal's response to Trudeau's "infamous White Paper" on how Canada should treat aboriginal peoples. Trudeau, who was the darling of many U.S. media members during his tenure as Prime Minister, had actually created, Cardinal charged in his book, "...a thinly disguised program of extermination through assimilation."

Beyond that, Cardinal, whose writing it can be presumed was read thoroughly by activist / author Atwood - who was and is certainly an "A" student in matters of Canadian nationalism and cultural diversity - attacked Canadians' supposed "fair-minded and tolerant" self-image. He also questioned the sincerity of his nation's expressed concern over Third World hunger and racial issues in the America."..when Canadians ignore the plight of the Indian or Metis or Eskimo in their own country."

So, given the popularity of that 1960s-era book, at a time when Canadian opposition to the U.S. involvement in the blood-soaked Vietnam war rang shrill and loud, and a spirited national dialogue was occurring in Canada during that period with reference to the treatment of native peoples, it is reasonable to conjecture that Atwood expressed her morality - not just on the uncivilized "civilization" shoved down Canada's throat by America, but rather on the guilt discussed herein - through the actions and words of her narrator. And that connection having been offered, a connection which is certainly not a unique approach to Atwood at all, and doesn't claim to be, let's now be clear that this paper is asserting the narrator's guilt is identified as a metaphor for Canada's history of unfairness towards its native peoples, toward the deforestation of primeval forests, and the letting in - hence, the validating - of corrupt American values and culture.

And so, the position of this reader is not that the supposed victimization of women (through the narrator's feminist leanings, through her own failed romantic relationships, and her locked-in position as a good sexual partner for Joe, who is good in bed but offers little else) is designed to parallel the Canada's colonial experience (as many critics allege). But rather the point is that the postcolonial layers of guilt that thinking people in Canada (and elsewhere) must cope with or be in denial about is reflected - and personified - through the narrator herself.

And in a bigger brushstroke of color splashed across the canvas of this novel, why couldn't it be presented that the abortion (whether it happened or not) the narrator feels so guilty about is actually a metaphor for the way in which native peoples were flushed out of the womb of a virgin Canada? Like an unwanted fetus, the natives (similar to what happened in colonial America and elsewhere in the British Empire) were cruelly, rudely, coldly and surgically removed from the womb and cast aside to rot. The narrator doesn't tell Anna (page 45) about the abortion; and when she explains to readers that she has no photos of the baby "...peering out from a crib or...through the bars of a playpen," that presents an image of a prison, something trapped that wants and needs to be released. Does that phantom dead baby represent a dying or dead primeval Canada? Does it paint a picture of a Canada that is imprisoned by history's legacy of cultural unfairness towards First World people and of brutally arbitrary colonial chains?

I have to behave as though it doesn't exist," the narrator goes on, in reference to her abortion; "...it was taken away from me, exported, deported...sliced off from me like a Siamese twin, my own flesh canceled." And so was innocent Canada canceled, it should be noted.

And at the end of the novel, when the narrator believes she's pregnant with a new baby, is it the symbolic rebirth of an uncorrupted Canadian culture - of a fresh clean evolutionary cycle being launched to replace what was aborted? When it comes to Atwood's narratives and symbolism, is anything too far out in left field to be possible?

On page 197 the narrator speaks of being a "time-traveler, the primeval one who will have to learn, shape of goldfish now in my belly, undergoing its watery changes." And the theory expressed in the paragraph above is given strength by her words on page 198, the last chapter; "If I die, it dies, if I starve it starves with me. It might be the first one, the first true human; it must be born, allowed." And of course at this point she doesn't really know if there is a baby inside of her, but the protagonist can have her dream of newness and her passion to place an evolutionary fresh slide into the projector of Canadian cultural and ecological history.

Closer Glance at Atwood, Feminism and Sex in the Novel:

It's no secret that Margaret Atwood mixes her feminism, nationalism, and progressive politics into a stew of poignant protest whenever the chance arrives. For example, writer Peter Wilkins ("Defense of the Realm: Canada's Relationship to The United States in Margaret Atwood's Surfacing") points to Atwood's part sexual and part nationalistic testimony (in 1988) before the Canadian House of Commons regarding her opposition to NAFTA (the free trade agreement between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico).

About the only position [America] has ever adopted toward us, country to country, has been the missionary position and we were never on top," Atwood unflinchingly asserted. But in a 1976 interview with Linda Sandler - published in Margaret Atwood: Conversations - Atwood is considerably less provocative in describing her politics: "All you can do is opt for the society that seems most humane," she explains, in answer to Sandler's question, "What are your politics?" In the U.S., Atwood claims, the government "is too big" and "out of control." You can throw your body in front of it "...and it runs right over you."

Meanwhile, the numerous passages in her book that are powerful blasts of female protestation against bad relationships and against the patterns of insincere men may be thought of as not merely hard core "feminist" themes put forward editorially by Atwood; but rather they should be viewed as universal themes. These passages have little if anything to do with nationalism or environmentalism; they are in the book, one supposes, partly because the reader needs to understand and relate to the plight of the narrator. She laments (page 84) that she fed Joe "unlimited supplies of nothing"; and being in a relationship, getting used to sex and small talk it all starts to seem the same. "When you can't tell the difference between your own pleasure and your pain you're an addict."