March 24 2009
Kaitlyn Kerkhoff
Hello classmates and mrs champagne. Hope your break is good so far and all that jazz. But so I choose to read Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. I like it so far, it’s a bit weird and can be a little disturbing at times but it’s not dull and it raises a lot of questions that have yet to be answered.
Here is a brief summary so far. The book takes place in Canada and the united states and it is during the mid to late 1800’s. The cool thing about this book is it is based on a real life, Alias Grace. What she did was kill her employer Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery when she was 16. It is believed that these two had an affair. Alias had a partner in crime as well, James McDermott, it is also believed that he loved Alias. So they killed the two and Mr. McDermott was hung as a penalty and she was just put in jail and asylums. Little true facts are supposedly known about the case of alias grace so there are some facts about her case, in the book, and others that Atwood put in with her own imagination. (If that makes any sense.)
I am on page 40 right now so im not really far into it but so far this is what has happened. It starts off as like a flashback or a dream about how Alias remembers the night she killed them. So basically yea she kills Thomas and Nancy and her and james like run but obviously get caught. Then there is a long poem once again explaining the killing and their penalties. James get hung she gets shut away in a looneybin. A few years later she is now 24 and out of the asylum and jail but she is now in a Penitentiary. She basically gets people tea and is supposed to be repenting. The governor’s wife who runs this place brings in a Doctor for Alias but for some reason Alias hates Doctors. So he comes in a room with her and sits down very calmly and introduces himself and what not. He then pulls out “knifes” and Alias realizes she has seen him before and screams and freaks out. So they take her back to the asylum. And I think she was raped by a Doctor some point in her life but I could be wrong. And yep
Literary Devices: There is a lot of similies and rhetorical questions.
“they cut him into pieces kike a pig to be salted dowm, he might as well have been bacon as far as they were concerned.” Page 28 Similie
“when I am dead and in my grave/ And all my bones are rotten,/When this you see remember me/ Lest I should be forgotten” page 26 a poem thing that has rhyme
“if this is a lesson to me, what is it I am supposed to be learning?” page 28 rhetorical question
“Holy, holy, holy lord god almighty/ Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee/Holy, holy, holy merciful and mighty,/ God in three person, blessed trinity.” Page 33 This is a church hymn that has anaphora, rhyme and it’s bit ironic because people in a insane Asylum are like praising god.
So for the themes so far I guess would be that people are misunderstood in this point in time especially women. Like in one instance a wife ran to get away from her husband who beat her frequently. And alias always says she is like okay and the press just lies and makes things seem worse then they are. Yeah.
But that’s my book. It’s kinda weird and a little disturbing at times but it’s intresting. So I hope you guys all have a good break and yea. Bye!
