The theme of death in prose by Margaret Atwood

The subject of the research is the death in prose by the famous modern Canadian writer Margaret Atwood (b. 1939). The object of the research are the novels and short stories of the author (novels "The Blind Assassin", "Cat's Eye", "Lady Oracle" etc.). The author of the article pays special attention to the biographical narratives of the Canadian writer, in which the main character is also the narrator. Stories of storytellers by M. Atwood, as a rule, always unfolds retrospectively – from the present to the past. During their journey, the narrating characters mentally return to the past and conduct "negotiations with the dead." Based on the researches of M. Atwood's legacy, as well as on the literary works of the Canadian writer herself, the author of the article describes the place of the theme of death in her retrospective narratives. The author of the article comes to the following conclusions. 1) The theme of death is one of the key themes in her work. Atwood, since the retrospective narrative of the biography itself involves an appeal to the past, to the world of the dead. Remembering, the main character, the narrator, mentally makes a journey into the world of the past, which M. Atwood rhymes with the afterlife. 2) The creative process, the creation of a story in the writer's artistic world, takes place during "negotiations with the dead", when the hero-narrator mentally addresses people from his past. 3) Death in the works of M. Atwood often appears in the form of a relic, an archaeological find, a lost and rediscovered thing. The difficult process of exhumation and extraction from the ground is consonant with the equally difficult process of dissecting the narrator's own complexes and resentments.

Margaret Atwood, Canadian literature, death, otherworld, narrative, narrative strategy, negotiating with the dead, monomyth, unreliable storyteller, hero-storyteller