106 pages • 3 hours read
Margaret AtwoodA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
“The rewards in the case of success would be enormous, Jimmy’s father explained, doing the straight-talking man-to-man act he had recently adopted with Jimmy. What well-to-do and once-young, once-beautiful woman or man, cranked up on hormonal supplements and shot full of vitamins but hampered by the unforgiving mirror, wouldn’t sell their house, their gated retirement villa, their kids, and their soul to get a second kick at the sexual can? NooSkins for Olds, said the snappy logo.”
Jimmy’s father works for a company that caters to an ongoing of the human race: the desire for youth and beauty. Mirroring claims made by the beauty and plastic surgery industries, NooSkins preys on consumers’ desperation (and money) by claiming that they can offer a second chance thanks to a range of hormones and vitamins.
“‘Be that as it may,’ she said – a sign that she wasn’t going to give in.
‘Be that as it may, there’s research and there’s research. What you’re doing – this pig brain thing. You’re interfering with the building blocks of life. It’s immoral. It’s . . . sacrilegious.’”
Genetic engineering was and is a controversial subject, and this is highlighted by Jimmy’s mother. She has become increasingly disillusioned with her life and marriage, and she does not approve of the kind of research and experimentation with which her husband has become involved. When he defends his work, she argues that it is immoral and sacrilegious. This statement thus not only reiterates the strained relationship between Jimmy’s parents but poses a moral and religious question to the reader.
“‘Hang on to the words,’ he tells himself. The odd words, the old words, the rare ones. Valance. Norn. Serendipity. Pibroch. Lubricious. When they’re gone out of his head, these words, they’ll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been.”
Snowman often finds himself thinking of words that he remembers from his past life. While he finds it upsetting to think of his past in some ways, he feels that he alone is keeping it alive, in particular, through his memories of words. Were he to forget these words, it would be as though they never existed. Also, as this passage shows, he finds words that are old or unusual especially worthy of preservation due to their rarity.
By Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
Margaret Atwood
Backdrop Addresses Cowboy
Margaret Atwood
Cat's Eye
Margaret Atwood
Death By Landscape
Margaret Atwood
Hag-Seed: William Shakespeare's The Tempest Retold
Margaret Atwood
Happy Endings
Margaret Atwood
Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing
Margaret Atwood
Lady Oracle
Margaret Atwood
Life Before Man
Margaret Atwood
MaddAddam
Margaret Atwood
Rape Fantasies
Margaret Atwood
Siren Song
Margaret Atwood
Stone Mattress
Margaret Atwood
Surfacing
Margaret Atwood
The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood
The Circle Game
Margaret Atwood
The Edible Woman
Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood
The Heart Goes Last
Margaret Atwood
The Landlady
Margaret Atwood