The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Published 2000 · 628 pages · 177,886 words · about 16 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
How hard is The Blind Assassin to read?
The Blind Assassin scores 74 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 68 out of 100
- Atwood employs a rich and precise vocabulary, featuring words like 'smithereens,' 'chignon,' 'penitential,' 'hypotaxis,' 'diaphanous,' 'venal,' and 'otiose.' While not relying on invented language or extensive archaisms like *Finnegans Wake*, the prose frequently uses sophisticated terms and vivid, often metaphorical, descriptions that elevate it beyond accessible contemporary fiction, placing it above *2666* in terms of word choice. The embedded 'Blind Assassin' narrative introduces unique terms like 'Snilfards' and 'thulks,' which are contextualized but add to the specialized feel.
- Sentence structure: 65 out of 100
- The novel features frequent long sentences with multiple clauses, extensive use of subordination, and parenthetical asides that demand sustained attention. Iris's reflective narration often leads to complex sentence structures, such as 'I could hear the calmness of my own voice, as if from a distance.' While not reaching the extreme lengths or grammatical demands of a Jamesian novel or *Ulysses*, the prose is significantly more intricate than *The Great Gatsby*, requiring careful parsing to follow the nuanced thought processes and layered descriptions.
- Abstraction: 70 out of 100
- Beyond its concrete family saga, the novel deeply explores themes of memory, truth, storytelling, social class, and the nature of reality, particularly through the allegorical 'Blind Assassin' narrative. This embedded story functions as a philosophical commentary on power, sacrifice, and human nature, elevating the text's abstraction level considerably. The narrative frequently shifts between direct observation and Iris's internal philosophical musings, placing it closer to *2666* in its probing of deeper meanings.
- Information density: 72 out of 100
- The text is dense with interwoven narratives, historical context spanning decades (WW1, the Depression, Canadian social history), and intricate character backstories. The constant interplay between Iris's present-day reflections, newspaper clippings, and the fantastical 'Blind Assassin' story demands significant reader attention to track multiple plotlines and thematic layers. This layering of information, combined with rich descriptive detail and symbolic resonance, creates a demanding reading experience, surpassing *Lolita* in its conceptual load.
- Narrative indirection: 75 out of 100
- The narrative frequently requires readers to infer meaning, as the elderly narrator, Iris, admits to selective memory and biased perspectives, stating, 'in households like ours there's often more in silences than in what is actually said.' The embedded 'Blind Assassin' novel functions as a metaphorical commentary, demanding readers connect its allegorical events to the main plot's unspoken truths. This layered approach to truth-telling places it significantly higher than direct narratives like '1984' (35), aligning more with the inferential demands of 'Lolita' (72) due to its unreliable narration.
- Symbolic density: 80 out of 100
- The text is rich with recurring motifs and allegorical elements, most notably the entire 'Blind Assassin' story, which serves as an extended metaphor for exploitation, power, and voicelessness within Iris's own life. Objects like the silver box, the Weary Soldier statue, and even mundane items like buttons carry profound symbolic weight, reflecting themes of memory, loss, and societal roles. This pervasive symbolism, integral to understanding the narrative, positions it closer to 'To the Lighthouse' (82) than to less symbolic works like 'To Kill a Mockingbird' (45).
- Ironic distance: 72 out of 100
- Iris's narration maintains a consistent ironic distance, particularly when recounting societal expectations, her family's public image, and her own past actions, often with a detached, cynical wit. The contrast between her stated beliefs and the implied authorial critique of the circumstances or characters creates a significant gap for the reader to navigate. This sophisticated blend of sympathy and critique, reminiscent of 'The Great Gatsby' (70) and 'Lolita' (75), requires constant recalibration of meaning.
- Resolution withholding: 70 out of 100
- The novel deliberately withholds clear-cut resolutions, especially regarding the central mystery of Laura's death and the true identity and motivations of the unnamed man in the embedded story. The excerpt concludes with Iris's unresolved emotional state, indicating a lack of personal closure, 'the old wound has split open, the invisible blood pours forth.' While the plot moves forward, the deeper meanings and implications remain open-ended, exceeding the closure of 'Beloved' (40) but not reaching the extreme ambiguity of 'Crying of Lot 49' (75).
- Structural complexity: 82 out of 100
- The book exhibits high structural complexity through its multi-layered narrative, interweaving Iris's present-day reflections with extensive flashbacks, embedded newspaper clippings, and the complete pulp sci-fi novel 'The Blind Assassin.' This embedded story, with its own unnamed narrators and allegorical parallels, adds a significant formal experiment. This intricate construction, with its constant shifts in time and narrative mode, is more complex than 'Midnight's Children' (68) and approaches the interwoven realities of 'Pedro Paramo' (80).
How The Blind Assassin is regarded
The Blind Assassin holds a literary regard score of 72 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.