Atwood’s short story “Bluebeard’s Egg” Essay Example
Atwood’s short story “Bluebeard’s Egg” Essay Example

Atwood’s short story “Bluebeard’s Egg” Essay Example

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Atwood’s Bluebeard’s Egg is a narrative that supports the subject of perceptual experience being a human feature which merely presents the truth the peculiar individual wants to believe. The first grounds of this appears in Sally’s description of Edward. her hubby. who by her ideas is a “dumb blond” that need her protection and intelligence to last. “At set intervals an angel appears. conveying him nutrient. That’s all right with Ed who barely notices what he eats. but the angel is acquiring tired of being an angel” ( 168. prgh1 ) We get this image of the “caring wife” protecting a not-so-intelligent hubby out of love and commiseration.

This is Sally’s perceptual experience of the truth. On the other manus we see her immatureness in her enunciation ( “heart-men” “fix their hear

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ts” . “looked like a giant-fig” ) which shows her ignorance of her husband’s line of work which is well hard and requires intelligence and dedication that few people possess. This is why the readers start to doubt Sally’s truth and at this point we side with the other “some” who say that he is “intelligent and even superb. otherwise how can he be so successful” ? ( 151. last pgh ) This first struggle that takes topographic point in the readers themselves furthers the subject of the narrative. Who can we swear and why?

Sally’s perceptual experience is the lens system that we see the narrative through. but without it we wouldn’t have a vision at all. So we have to take her world and make up one's mind which truth we want to believe. Ed’s truth of a middle-age well-off doctor with a beautiful

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immature married woman who “doesn’t attention much for anything” except the nice modus operandi of his life. Or Marylynn’s perceptual experience of a broad. independent and confident adult female who doesn’t need a hubby to bask her life. Or eventually Sally’s despairing effort to keep on to her perfect life – married to a affluent handsome but not-so-smart hubby who provides a normal “happy” life for her.

The point in the narrative where Sally catches her hubby and her best friend traversing that line of rightness. is when she realizes that her perceptual experience of what was existent was really wholly incorrect from the beggary. This sudden cleft in her “perfect” life threatens the very foundations of an her apparently stable existence. “Sally has been incorrect about Ed. for old ages. everlastingly. ” ( 182 ) This is a important minute in the narrative as it shows Sally’s epiphany and provides a cryptic minute as to what she was traveling to make – confront her hubby and her best friend. or seek to disregard it in order to salvage her matrimony. her security cover. “Sally puts down the spatula. wipes her manus on the hand-towel. puts her weaponries around him. holds on tighter that she should. ” ( 183. 3rd prgh ) This is the image we get – of Sally seeking to keep on to her illusive world.

In a manner the egg in the narrative is the truth that humans seek but the truth is covered by the difficult protective shell and merely people who go beyond the surface and expression for alteration can acquire to the nucleus – to the truth which provides release.

The construction of the narrative with the old “Bluebeard” narrative in the center of this new narrative reminds me of the egg which was one time created and now has a life inside itself and will make in its bend. “Sally thinks the egg is alive. and one twenty-four hours it will hatch. But what will come out of it? ” ( 184. 1st prgh )

This relates to Atwood’s contemplating of the “creative process” . Like in other verse forms by her. we see the birth of new constructs from the roots of our really ain creative activity. This besides compares to the ways in which our battle with a text. the act of reading literature. corresponds to “reading” world. Atwood’s narrative suggests that in both cases. “guesswork” or “intuition” is every bit cardinal as close analysis. But whether our reading of the narrative is intuitive or analytical. the result is an ageless pursuit after an illusory truth because nil is what it seems.

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