Abstract
Like Morrison and Mason, Margaret Atwood attends to the work of media in carrying ideology into everyday life and the role of images in shaping consciousness throughout her writing. However, because Atwood’s vision of contemporary society is bleaker than the other writers’, the sense of danger associated with issues of visuality is exponentially greater in her work as is the sense of urgency she associates with writing. Indeed in a recent interview, Atwood explains that because the tools to which humans have access have grown very powerful, with unprecedented powers of destruction, the future of humanity depends on whether “we as a species have the emotional maturity and the wisdom to use our powerful tools well” (“Author Interview”). Although she doesn’t mention them specifically in the interview, visual technologies represent some of the powerful tools to which Atwood alludes and to which she returns frequently throughout her writing.1 In particular, Atwood is interested in exploring the irony that the act of seeing can itself be used to blind or distract people from clear political vision. For Atwood, the gravest danger is associated with the failure to see, or the failure to recognize and respond to others’ suffering.