Iris as an Evil Narcissist: Moral Dimension Surrounding the Construction of Truth in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin
MIN-INNALA, SOFIA (2008)
MIN-INNALA, SOFIA
2008
Englantilainen filologia - English Philology
Humanistinen tiedekunta - Faculty of Humanities
This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2008-01-15
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:uta-1-17608
https://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:uta-1-17608
Tiivistelmä
My thesis addresses problems of moral evil in Atwood’s novel, The Blind Assassin and thus aims to show how banal aspects of narcissistic desires can contribute to the creation and development of moral evil. By tracing evidence of small moral evil in the book, I attempt to provide the grounds for regarding the narrator Iris as evil. My focus is thus on the way the narrator depicts other people in her memoir including herself and on the manner she shapes her memoir, which give rise to a number of morally relevant questions concerning her moral thinking and attitude.
As regards the theories I have employed in my analysis, Kant’s moral theory concerning the way moral issues are ignored by the demands of self-love is the main tool for understanding the novel in terms of moral evil. In this context, different kinds of self-deception often assist Iris to divert her attention from her moral duties. Some main features of the theory of narcissism are also referred to in connection with Iris’s past and present psychological state. Some aspects of self-narratives are also applied to the veracity of Iris’s argument that she is offering ‘truth.’
In Chapter 3, my purpose is to examine Iris’s narcissistic attempt to create a favourable self-image. First of all, I look at Iris’s attempt to show her virtuous side as a daughter, who sacrifices herself to help her father, but point to her failure to be a dutiful daughter owing to her adoption of self-deception regarding a moral issue surrounding her father’s death. With regard to her relationships with her sister-in-law Winifred and her husband Richard, I attempt to show how Iris victimizes herself and endeavours to make them look evil while paying attention to Iris’s narcissistic injuries caused by them and her lack of recognition of her own deceitful behaviour. More importantly, I look closely at the ambivalent way Iris describes her sister Laura and deals with the latter’s suffering and death, which reveals her old envy and hate towards Laura. Her avoidance of necessary moral deliberation, and worse, her morally opportunistic attitude allow her to adopt various self-deceptive strategies to protect her self-image.
In Chapter 4, I attempt to see a bigger picture by taking a close at Iris’s manoeuvres as an author. I examine how, disguised as a fictional character, Iris unconsciously creates an ‘other’ her, in the romance subtext in the embedded novel. More significantly, Iris’s attempt to lead the reader to conceive of her memoir as a tragedy and its moral implications are discussed in terms of her narrative control and manipulation. Here, the concepts of tragedy and truth are used to turn the reader’s attention away from her moral responsibility for the questionable choices she made in the past. In connection with this, how the different layers of narratives can serve the purpose of supporting Iris’s self-representation as a victim of circumstance is also briefly discussed. Iris’s real reason to grasp a pen is also considered in the light of Iris’s inner thoughts, which reveal her unconscious desire. Although Atwood seems to keep authorial distance from the narrator’s narcissistic attempt to defend herself, the force of her structural design in a way appears to affirm Iris’s delusional reconciliation with her sister and her false catharsis.
Keywords: (moral) evil, self-love(narcissism), self-deception, truth
As regards the theories I have employed in my analysis, Kant’s moral theory concerning the way moral issues are ignored by the demands of self-love is the main tool for understanding the novel in terms of moral evil. In this context, different kinds of self-deception often assist Iris to divert her attention from her moral duties. Some main features of the theory of narcissism are also referred to in connection with Iris’s past and present psychological state. Some aspects of self-narratives are also applied to the veracity of Iris’s argument that she is offering ‘truth.’
In Chapter 3, my purpose is to examine Iris’s narcissistic attempt to create a favourable self-image. First of all, I look at Iris’s attempt to show her virtuous side as a daughter, who sacrifices herself to help her father, but point to her failure to be a dutiful daughter owing to her adoption of self-deception regarding a moral issue surrounding her father’s death. With regard to her relationships with her sister-in-law Winifred and her husband Richard, I attempt to show how Iris victimizes herself and endeavours to make them look evil while paying attention to Iris’s narcissistic injuries caused by them and her lack of recognition of her own deceitful behaviour. More importantly, I look closely at the ambivalent way Iris describes her sister Laura and deals with the latter’s suffering and death, which reveals her old envy and hate towards Laura. Her avoidance of necessary moral deliberation, and worse, her morally opportunistic attitude allow her to adopt various self-deceptive strategies to protect her self-image.
In Chapter 4, I attempt to see a bigger picture by taking a close at Iris’s manoeuvres as an author. I examine how, disguised as a fictional character, Iris unconsciously creates an ‘other’ her, in the romance subtext in the embedded novel. More significantly, Iris’s attempt to lead the reader to conceive of her memoir as a tragedy and its moral implications are discussed in terms of her narrative control and manipulation. Here, the concepts of tragedy and truth are used to turn the reader’s attention away from her moral responsibility for the questionable choices she made in the past. In connection with this, how the different layers of narratives can serve the purpose of supporting Iris’s self-representation as a victim of circumstance is also briefly discussed. Iris’s real reason to grasp a pen is also considered in the light of Iris’s inner thoughts, which reveal her unconscious desire. Although Atwood seems to keep authorial distance from the narrator’s narcissistic attempt to defend herself, the force of her structural design in a way appears to affirm Iris’s delusional reconciliation with her sister and her false catharsis.
Keywords: (moral) evil, self-love(narcissism), self-deception, truth