Dialectical Journal #26:The Blind Assassin

Passages From The Text	Pg #	Comments & Questions
“She did understand, or at least understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, and said nothing about it, and prayed for the power to forgive and did forgive. But he can’t have found living with her forgiveness all that easy. Breakfast in a haze of forgiveness: coffee with forgiveness, porridge with forgiveness, forgiveness on the buttered toast. He would have been helpless against it, for how can you repudiate against something that is never spoken... She wished him to owe his recovery to her alone- to her care, to her tireless devotion. That’s the other side of selflessness: its tyranny.”	77	(R) It’s amazing how Atwood can make something such as forgiveness, something that’s usually viewed as an admirable virtue, into a jail. Though, people always seem to want what they can’t have. If the man had been greeted with anger he would think ‘You don’t understand.” Yet, when shown understanding, however fake it may be, and given a heaping plate of forgiveness, it seems wrong.              I thought the last line was interesting though. (“That’s the…tyranny.”) Could that be true? Caring nothing about yourself, caring everything about other people… wouldn't the person who’s being cared about so wholly start feeling as if they owe you something? If you deny that person anything, you would seem heartless. Biting the hand that works so hard to keep you happy.  I kind of feel suffocated just imagining it.