Collected Writings of Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood (1939-)
From "Origins of Stories"
Our first stories come to us through the air. We hear voices.
Children in oral societies grow up within a web of stories; but so do all children. We listen before we can read. Some of our listening is more like listening in, to the calamitous or seductive voices of the adult world, on the radio or the television or in our daily lives. Often it’s an overhearing of things we aren’t supposed to hear, eavesdropping on scandalous gossip or family secrets. From all these scraps of voices, from the whispers and shouts that surround us, even from ominous silences, the unfilled gaps in meaning, we patch together for ourselves an order of events, a plot or plots; these, then, are the things that happen, these are the people they happen to, this is the forbidden knowledge.
We have all been little pitchers with big ears, shooed out of the kitchen when the unspoken is being spoken, and we have probably all been tale-bearers, blurters at the dinner table, unwitting violators of adult rules of censorship. Perhaps this is what writers are: those who never kicked the habit. We remained tale-bearers. We learned to keep our eyes open, but not to keep our mouths shut.
If we’re lucky, we may also be given stories meant for our ears, stories intended for us. These may be children’s Bible stories, tidied up and simplified and with the vicious bits left out. They may be fairy tales, similarly sugared, although if we are very lucky it will be left in. In any case, these tales will have deliberate, molded shapes, unlike stories we have patched together for ourselves. They will contain mountains, deserts, talking donkeys, dragons; and, unlike the kitchen stories, they will have definite endings. We are likely to accept these stories being on the same level of reality as the kitchen stories. It’s only when we are older that we are taught to regard one kind of story as real and the other kind as mere invention. This is about the same time we’re taught to believe that dentists are useful, and writers are not.
Traditionally, both the kitchen gossips and the readers-out-loud have been mothers or grandmothers, native languages have been mother tongues, and the kinds of stories that are told to children have been called nursery tales or old wives’ tales. It struck me as no great coincidence when I learned recently that, when a great number of prominent writers were asked to write about the family member who had the greatest influence on their literary careers, almost all of them, male as well as female, had picked their mothers. Perhaps this reflects the extent to which North American children have been deprived of the grandfathers, those other great repositories of story; perhaps it will come to change if men come to share in early child care, and we will have old husbands’ tales. But as things are, language, including the language of our earliest-learned stories, is a verbal matrix, not a verbal patrix . . .
Questions for Discussion
B) “. . . we are taught to regard one kind of story as real . . .” [paragraph 4, next to last line]
C) “We have remained tale-bearers” [paragraph 3]
D) “We will have old husbands’ tales” [paragraph 5]
E) “. . . the kinds of stories that are told to children have been called nursery tales . . .” [paragraph 5]
6. A careful reading of the last two paragraphs of the excerpt can lead the reader to infer that
A) society does not value the story teller
B) women should be the story tellers
C) story telling should be left to children
D) men can never be story tellers
E) the author is a mother herself
7. The predominant tone of the passage is best stated as
A) scathingly bitter
B) sweetly effusive
C) reverently detailed
D) wistfully observant
E) aggressively judgmental
8. The author makes use of which of the following rhetorical strategies?
A) narration and description
B) exposition and persuasion
C) process and analysis
D) anecdote and argument
E) cause and effect
9. A shift in the focus of the passage occurs with which of the following?
A) “If we’re lucky” [paragraph 4]
B) “Perhaps, this is what writers are . . .” [paragraph 5]
C) “Traditionally, . . .” [paragraph 5]
D) “Perhaps this reflects the extent to which children have been deprived of their grandfathers . . .” [paragraph 5]
E) “But, as things are, language, including the language of the earliest-learned stories . . .” [paragraph 5]
10. The primary purpose of the passage is to
A) plead for men to tell more stories
B) criticize censorship
C) idealize children
D) analyze story telling
E) look at the sources of story telling
The City Planners [1965]
Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.
But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things:
the smell of spilled oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows
give momentary access to
the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster
when the houses, capsized, will slide
obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.
That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;
guessing directions, they sketch
transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing air
tracing the panic of suburb
order in a bland madness of snows
Questions for Discussion
1. When the author says “a levelness of surface like a rebuke to the dent in our car door,” she is saying their car
A) reflects qualities similar to the neighborhood.
B) has difficulty climbing the hills in the neighborhood.
C) is in sharp contrast to the neighborhood.
D) has been dented by an accident in the neighborhood.
2. What is the lone sound heard in the neighborhood?
A) A lawnmower
B) Glass breaking
C) Shouting
D) Plaster cracking
3. For the most part, the personifications in this passage are used to
A) add a sense of displeasure and foreboding.
B) compare the neighborhoods with the workspaces of the Planners.
C) reflect the ideal state of this particular neighborhood.
D) establish that this is a poem rather than another type of fiction.
4. The simile “a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise” is used to
A) indicate that the neighborhood has been a victim of vandalism.
B) provide evidence that the Planners can be hurt in subtle ways.
C) contrast this particular house with everything else in the neighborhood.
D) emphasize how out-of-place this imperfection is.
5. Using the phrases “panic of suburb order” and “bland madness” in lines 37 and 38 of the poem, the author is
A) combining contradictory words to create an image emphasizing her message.
B) using hyperbole to insert humor into a normally serious subject.
C) showing the irony of what happens when suburbs are not carefully planned.
D) creating a more poetic voice by using alliteration as a sound device.
6. Which of the following choices is an example of the “sanities” mentioned in line 4 of the poem?
A) “…the insane faces of political conspirators…”
B) “…the roofs all display the same slant of avoidance…”
C) “…the future cracks in the plaster…”
D) “…a splash of paint on brick…”
1 C Vocabulary
2 A Demonstrate General Understanding
3 A Examine Content and Structure: Literary Text
4 D Examine Content and Structure: Literary Text
5 A Examine Content and Structure: Literary Text
6 B Demonstrate General Understanding
1. One reason Atwood gives for the presence of stories in children’s lives is
A) scandalous gossip
B) family secrets
C) supernatural influences
D) listening
E) radio and television
2. The close association between the reader and the author is immediately established by
A) a first person, plural point-of-view
B) placing the reader into a family situation
C) using accessible diction and syntax
D) being emotional
E) appealing to the child in the reader
3. The last sentence of paragraph 2, “From all these scraps . . .” to “forbidden knowledge,” contains all of the following except:
A) parallel structure
B) a periodic sentence
C) prepositional phrases
D) a compound-complex sentence
E) an ellipsis
4. The phrase “forbidden knowledge” in the last sentence of the second paragraph can best be categorized as
A) a paradox
B) a biblical allusion
C) hyperbole
D) antithesis
E) understatement
5. According to the author, the writer is like a child because
A) “We are likely to accept these stories as being of the same level of reality as the kitchen stories” [paragraph 4]