Citation

Yumiko O. Kasumigaoka Review 2007; 13: 1-12.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Fukuoka Women's University)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

By the time True Stories (1981), her 9th poem collection, was published, Margaret Atwood had become well known internationally as well as in Canada for both her novels and poems. Bodily Harm, her 5th published novel, was issued in the same year. In that year, Atwood was active socially as a vice-chair of the Writers' Union of Canada and also spoke out as a spokesperson of Amnesty International against the abuse of human rights. The expression "Witness is what you must bear" used in the title of this paper is quoted from the title poem "Notes towards a Poem That Can Never Been Written" in Section II of True Stories. Atwood's speakers in this poem collection give various kinds of witness to oppression. In this paper, I focus on the line "Witness is what you must bear" and discuss what various narrators in the poems report and eventually why they do bear witness. The poems in Section II, titled "Notes towards a Poem That Can Never Been Written" involve torture and violence in the Caribbean islands where Atwood was going during the 1970s. During those years, Atwood herself collected information about the situations of people in the Caribbean world and felt a need to speak out. The speakers deliver reports on the violence in both political and private situations. Repetitive use of "you" in the poems forces the reader to participate in the plot, encouraging them to bear witness on behalf of those silenced. However, can witness convey the truth? There is no single truth. In her 4th published novel Life Before Man (1979), Atwood emphasizes there cannot be any single fact through different perspectives of plural narrators. Clearly, in history power makes the facts and spreads them as the only truth, suppressing other facts deriving from the powerless. Different perspectives by the people "not in power" are important to approximate closely to the truth. True Stories utilizes different perspectives that the reader needs in order to comprehend the world.