“Lusus Naturae” by Margaret Atwood was an incredibly strange story. The title means “freak of nature” (according to Google) in Latin which was an interesting choice, but one that definitely fits with the strangeness and mysteriousness of the story that follows.

It’s the first story in this collection in which Margaret Atwood chooses a first-person narrator, and I think it’s a good decision in this case. This is a story about a girl who is outcasted by society for her differences and is thought to be dead for most of the story. To have even a close 3rd person narrator would not capture that ostracization and aloneness of the character. The first person narrator also allows her thoughts and emotions to be clearly articulated and for no more explanation besides what this character knows. If it had been a 3rd person narrator, the reader might get more frustrated, wanting the narrator to explain what the disease was. It’s important to know this character’s motivations, especially when she bites the man on the neck, something a member of society would clearly know was wrong and would condemn her for. We get to see her confusion and her hope that these two people are like her and that she can finally fit in with someone because she tells us that.

The story is mysterious. The doctor knows what it is that ails the character, but the family chooses to believe it’s a demon or a curse and the character herself doesn’t even know what it’s called. Her sister, concerned with her own future, says, “curse or disease, it doesn’t matter.” Atwood is not only condemning the negative way those who are different are treated by society but also the way that people don’t even want to learn those differences. If Atwood had named the disease and the cure and if the family and town had been willing to understand it, the story never would have spiraled out of control the way that it did.

Atwood successfully makes the story heartbreaking in a number of ways. The narrator’s own mother views her as “a reproach, a judgment.” Her father used to read with her in the crook of his arm and then he sat her “on the other side of the table” with “enforced distance.” She says that only the cat wants to spend time with her.

As the story goes on, the narrator becomes more animalistic but only as she’s more and more rejected by her own family. She never comes across as an unsympathetic character, in my opinion. She is fine with “dying” so her sister can be married, and she understands why her mother would want to be rid of her. She finds the best in the situation and a sort of freedom from her imprisonment, which adds to her likability. She even believes the people at the end who want to kill her have “the best intentions at heart,” and she leaves the story with a delusional optimism, which makes the ending even more heartbreaking.

 

Questions:

1. How did the title contribute to the story?
2. How do you think Atwood created sympathy for this character?
3. Her death, in the end, wasn’t exactly unexpected. How do you think that Atwood kept it from being a cliché? Do you think she kept it from being exactly what you’d expected would happen?
4. Did the mysteriousness and strangeness of the story frustrate you or help you better understand the character?
5. How did you respond to the narrator’s family? Why? Does Atwood create complexity in these minor characters?
6. Do you think she managed to tell a fully developed story in six pages? Why or why not? If so, how did she do it? If not, what aspects of the story felt undeveloped to you?