Structure in the Works of Margaret Atwood
By placing a story's conclusion immediately before the start in order to preview how they unfold, Margaret Atwood establishes a story's importance and hooks the reader's attention. In novels, she does this through the use of rearranging chapters out of chronological order, and in her short stories, she simply writes the conclusion before the introduction of a story.
Cordelia has much significance to Elaine in Margaret Atwood’s novel Cat’s Eye. Atwood commences her story with the protagonist, Elaine, reflecting on how she has aged in ways such as her loss of vision and the appearance of wrinkles. Proceeding this reflection, Atwood immediately establishes Cordelia’s significance throughout the rest of the text by writing on page 6 of Cat’s Eye that “there is no one” Elaine “would ever tell this to except Cordelia. But which Cordelia? The one” she “conjured up, the one with the roll top boots and the turned-up collar, or the one before, or the one after? There is never only one of anyone" (Atwood, 1989, p. 6) This reflects the multiple personalities that Atwood will give Cordelia and its significant impact on Elaine because Atwood chooses to place Elaine's end-of-life reflection about before revealing how Cordelia has made an impact with the rest of the novel. It ultimately establishes Cordelia’s importance to Elaine in the novel because the reader can see that Atwood is going to elaborate on many different experiences with Cordelia that will lead Elaine to this conclusion. Ultimately, a reflection of one's aged self and multiple experiences with a person over an entire lifetime usually take place in the conclusion of a novel; however, Atwood’s use of this reversal of structure enables her to establish the importance of these elements in her text through foreshadowing.
Not only does Atwood write the chronological conclusion at the beginning of her texts to establish importance by foreshadowing, she also uses this structure to grab the attention of her readers. The short story “Isis in Darkness” from Margaret Atwood's book of short stories Wilderness Tips begins with Richard, the protagonist, being distracted from his job with recollections of a poet who he never married or had a serious relationship with, but who he considered his true love. Atwood establishes that on Thursdays Richard’s mind is brought to a misrecollection of Selena, his true love, wending “her way through a long underground tunnel encrusted with blood-red jewels and with arcane inscriptions that glitter in the light of torches”(Atwood, 1991, p. 51). Atwood grabs the reader's attention because she makes the reader question the significance of Thursdays and why Selena would do such a thing given that the short stories preceding this one were all non-fiction. If written chronologically, this should be written last. It is not until the physical end of “Isis in Darkness” that Atwood reveals to the reader that Richards' recollection of Selena that began the story was actually him recalling, after her death, a poem she once read on a Thursday night. By setting up the structure in this way, Atwood maintains the reader's attention throughout the entire story because it takes until the very end to understand why she started the story the way she did, with the finale first.
By rearranging the structure of her stories, Margaret Atwood is able to foreshadow the contents of the rest of the