Surfacing (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

By SparkNotes

Surfacing (SparkNotes Literature Guide) by Margaret Atwood
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Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster.   Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provides:   *Chapter-by-chapter analysis
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• Language: English
• Publisher: SparkNotes
• Release date: Aug 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781411477827

Book preview

Cover of SparkNotes Guide to Surfacing by SparkNotes Editors

Surfacing

Margaret Atwood

© 2003, 2007 by Spark Publishing

This Spark Publishing edition 2014 by SparkNotes LLC, an Affiliate of Barnes & Noble

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

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ISBN-13: 978-1-4114-7782-7

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Contents

Context

Plot Overview

Character List

Analysis of Major Characters

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Important Quotations Explained

Key Facts

Context

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, Canada. She went on to study at Victoria College at the University of Toronto and eventually received a master’s degree from Radcliffe College. Surfacing is Margaret Atwood’s second novel, which was published in 1972, only three years after her first novel The Edible Woman was published. Though one of Atwood’s early novels, Surfacing is not one of Atwood’s earliest publications. By the time Surfacing was published, she had already published several books of poetry. Atwood’s writing has been published in more than thirty languages.

Surfacing takes place in Quebec, and the unique identity of Quebec’s population comes into play in the novel. Quebec is the only Canadian province populated by residents of French (rather than British) descent. Atwood wrote Surfacing at a time when the cultural differences between Quebec and the rest of Canada were manifesting themselves in terms of rising Quebec nationalism. The 1960s saw the Quiet Revolution in Quebec: a series of economic and educational reforms coupled with a secularization of society. The Quiet Revolution afforded Quebec greater political and economic autonomy, giving Quebec’s French citizens a sense of nationalism and a desire to separate from Canada. Atwood marks this political change in Surfacing.