Story Construction in the Blind Assassin

8/10/2019 Story Construction in the Blind Assassin

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Barbara Dancygier

The University of British Colum bia

Narrative Anchors and

the Processes of Story Construction:

The C ase of Margaret Atw oo d s The Blind Assassin

Linguistic theory has often prompted new ways of addressing some of the central

questions of stylistic analysis (to mention only the emergence of discourse analysis

or pragm atics). The issues of correlations between form and function, which have

been crucial to analyses of

style,

have recently been given a new form through the

cogn itive linguists focus on the mechanisms ofmeaning construction.The term

was coinedtorepresent the fact that describing the senses of simple linguistic forms

cannot fully account for the resulting interpretation of complex expression w hich

contains them. Instead, words and other linguistic forms can be treated as prompts

for the construction of meaning, and the analys t s task is both to identify the

meaning chunks the expressions prompt, and, perhaps more importantly, to

describe the processes which explain the construction of the higher levels of

meaning.

Recent proposals have also extended stylistic analysis in ways which give

more focus to cognitive considerations (cf. Semino and Culpeper, Stockwell),

enriching our understanding of how vocabulary and sentence structure choices

reflect conceptual constructs (consider the work on metaphor and blending,

schem as, poetic forms, or speech and though t represen tation). It appears, then, that

cognitive considerations are enhancing our understanding of both specific

linguistic choices and general conceptual strategies involved in the construction of

meaning.

In retrospect, the definitive works on stylistic analysis, such as Leech and

Short s Style in Fiction were the first to talk in clear theoretical terms about

mean ing construction in a literary text. And indeed, literary discou rse is a perfect

exam ple of

n

expression mode where the emerging interpretation relies on the use

of specific expressions, but cannot be fully explained through those expressions


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134 Barbara Dancygier

available can be naturally applied to narrative discourse. However, two

interlocking frameworks which have emerged in the last twenty years, mental

spaces and blending theories, show significant promise in this respect (see, for

exam ple, Sanders and Redeker; Oakley; Turner Doub le-scope Stories; Semino

A Cognitive Stylistic Ap proach, Blending and Charac ters, Text wo rlds,

Dancygier Identity and Perspective, Visual View point, Blending and

Narrative ).

In this paper, I extend the basic concepts of mental spaces theory to identify

some of the aspects of meaning construction in fragmented narratives. Using

Margaret Atwood's The Blind ssassinas an example, I introduce the concept of

narrative anchors to describe some of the mechanisms which underlie the

construction of a cohe rent story out of several substories and explain som e of the

sources of various understandings of the text individual readers may arrive at.

1.

Story Structure

The authorial choices in sequencing the presentation of the story may rely on

different organizational principles. While time seems to be invariably important in

those choices, other factors often disturb the temporal sequence. In fact,

contem porary fiction often experim ents with the presentation of the story in ways

which deliberately make the reader's task harder. Disruptions affect all areas of

story construction temporal organization, continued identity of characters,

boundaries between fact and im agination, etc. And yet, in spite of llthe intricacy,

most readers have no difficulty in understanding the underlying story, and often

enjoy solving the puzzles presented by the text.

The disrupted form of many contemporary narratives and the resulting

challenges to narrative comprehension call for an elaboration of one oftheprimary

categories of classical narratology the distinction between thestoryon the one

hand and textanddiscourseon the other.'

W hile the various aspects ofthe textual surface have been discussed in much

detail, the story remains an under-defined concept, in spite of emerg ing research

in cognitive narratology where the underlying nature of story-telling is in focus.

Recen t work by Herm an ( Stories as a To ol ), for exam ple, discusses stori es as

tools supporting important aspects of conceptualizing experience. The narrative

form, in Herman's discussion, prompts for structuring experiences in specific

ways,such as distinguishing parts, or chunks, seeking causal explanations and


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Narrative Anchors 135

In classical na rratology, for com parison, a story is a largely intuitive concep t,

defined primarily by a sequence of events (Chatman

S tory and

Discourse;

Coming

to Terms .

The sequentiality of the story as a concept builds on the most basic

unde rstanding of narrativity as temporal series of connected events, leading from

some initial state to the final one. What is not discussed too often, though, is the

very complexity of the mental leap from such a sequence to the story as it is told in

the text, with its coheren ce and causal organization. Furtherm ore, the very concept

of what constitutes a

narrative event

is an important issue, in view of significant

differences among agentive acts, mental states, experiential events, etc. What

emerges from the discussions is the ambiguity of the term story , between the

characteristics of

story as a conceptualization device in Herman's sense, and the

specific story as it emerges from the text telling it. I will refer to the former generic

concep t as story-G, and to the narrative construct em erging from a specific text as

story-S,

and attempt to clarify the processes which yield story-S from the

interaction of the text and the principles of story-G.

There are num erous questions regarding the cognitive aspects of story-S. T he

primary one is what we might metaphorically refer to as the loca tion ofthestory.

It can reside only in two place s : the text or the rea de r's mind . The text seems to

be the assumed default choice, very much in the same way as folk semantics has

meaning residing in the words. The words as containers for me aning idea is

central to what is now known as the Conduit Metaphor (cf. Reddy, Lakoff and

Johnson), whereby speakers package the intended meaning into language

express ions for hearers to receive. If, alternately, we claim that the story resides in

the reader's mind, then how did it get there? The text (or texts) should be

responsible for its construction, though there is no one-to-one correspondence

between textual fragments and story elemen ts. As an exam ple, consider

The Great

Gatsbys

crucial event M yrtle W ilson's death. The story -S makes Daisy

responsible for it, since she drove the car that hit Myrtle, but the text does not

describe her doing it. The re is clearly enough in the text to let the reader figure it

out, but it is not part of what is commu nicated. Th e story is thus richer than the

text.

The specific processes which guide the reader in creating the story-S are not

very well investigated, with notable exceptions of the discussion of contextual

frames in Em m ott's

Narrative Comprehension,

and He rm an's general framework


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136

Barbara Dancygier

mental spaces as cognitive domains activated or set up by the use of linguistic

forms for the purposes of on-line m eaning construction; they are further described

as not being a part of language

itself

or a hidden level of representation, but as

having an indispensab le role in the construction of meaning. The role of linguistic

expressions is thus seen not as con tainers for meaning, but as prom pts which

guide its construction. Ifw assume, somewhat loosely, I admit, that the story -S

is the meaning of the text, then we might learn more about the nature of the story

by looking at the role specific textual choices play in its emergence.

The concept of emergent meaning is most transparently described in terms of

theblending of mental spaces, or conceptual integration (Fauconnier and Turner

Blending as a Central Process, Conceptual Integration, Principles, The

Way we Thin k, Coulson). For example, when the author Jonathan Raban recalls

his childhood experience of Twain's

Huckleberry Finn,

he describes it as

living

inside the book and goes on to elaborate on the fantasy world thus set up. The

expression cannot be understood literally (the narrator lived in an English village)

and is not conventiona l, so we can assume that the reader has to undertake mental

work to arrive at its meaning. A skeletal description of the blending processes is

given in Figure 1.

Childhood

Book

English v illage-4-

boy

stream -4

no adventure

Input 1

^Amer ica

Huck Finn

>-the Mississippi River

adventure

-America

-Huck Finn

-theMississippi^iver

-adventure

Input 2

Blend

ig 1

There are two input spaces,that of Jonathan Raban's childhood (with its temporal


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spaces are linked viacross-mappings which reveal and/or construct counterpart

elements in the inputs (e.g., the stream in the village and the Mississippi river).

Blending these inputs selectively projects Raban's childhood persona into the

temporal and spatial setting of

th

novel. Theemergent

stru ture

of

th

blend is not

simply a combination of these elements, but an emergent mental space where a

child living in 20th century England can experience adventure on the Mississippi.

The blend thus creates its own topology and yields meanings not available in the

inputs. At the same tim e, the blend may inform its inputs, viabackward projection

so that we can understand the ways in which reading made the boy's village

experience richer.

The analysis of this example applies to a narrative fragment, but the

mechanisms underlying its comprehension seem to work in similar ways when a

broader narrative context is considered . The novel as a whole can be talked about

in term sof narrative spaces which can be defined as cognitive dom ains activated

or set up in the reader 's m ind by the use of linguistic form s, for the purposes of on-

line story construction . A narrative space, once set

up,

is maintained through out the

story and serves as input to blends which will be constructed . The final sto ry-S

(with its event structure, sequential organization, cause-effect organization, and

other generic story-like features, and also its text-induced specificity) results from

subsequen t blend ing of lower level narrative spaces, and can be referred to as the

emergent

story.

As a blended construct, it relies on selective projection from lower

level spaces, but creates narrative structure of its own (roughly equivalent to an

idealized read er's version of what happened ) . Like other blended constructs, it

also projects new structure back to its input narrative spaces, thus enriching their

content with new topology (especially, new cause-effect relations).

The specific aspect of story-S construction which I elaborate here is the

privileged status of selected linguistic forms in the setting up and m aintenance of

narrative spaces, and in prom pting cross-space mappings further used in the blends

leading to the emergent story. Such expressions will be referred to as narrative

anchors.

2.Narrative Spaces and Narrative Anchors

An example of the scope of meaning cons truc t ion s imple express ions can

accomp lish is the f irst sentence of M argare t A tw oo d 's nove l . The Blind Assassin

given in (1) below.


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The sentence seems to be a straightforward description of a tragic event, reported

by La ura's sister. Iris. The highly specific description of

the

time of Laura's death,

however, suggests that it is not simply an instance of temporal framing.

Furtherm ore, the choice of the verbdriveimplies agenthood, and, consequently,

intentional behavior, so that it is unlikely that Laura's death was a result of an

accident. The policeman's report in the next paragraph also mentions two

witnesses who testified that Laura had turned the car sharply and delibe rately. In

the third paragrap h. Iris herself comments: It wasn't the brakes, I though t. She had

her reasons.

The novel is a fragmented narrative, with Iris's pseudo-autobiographical

confession as its central element. Itisthe core of

he

Blind Assassinnarrative (I will

refertoit sBA and is the fram ing story of all the remaining narrative fragments.

She starts her writing as an old woman, describing her daily tasks and walks, and

using them as prompts for reminiscing about her earlier life thus the actual

autobiography proceeds chrono logically from her childhood to old age. The initial

paragraphs, w here Lau ra's death is described in the terms quoted above, how ever,

are taken out of the temporal sequence of the memoirs. The viewpoint of this

section (called The bridge is unclear it is a part of the autobiog raphy, but Iris is

also announcing herself

s

the primary narrator. The doub le role is reflected in the

discourse. For exam ple. Iris introduces Laura s her sister while disregarding any

description of other characters mentioned her husband Richard or her caregiver,

Reenie. And yet, the fragment's main role is not to start Iris's narrative, but to set

up the space of the focal event of Laura's death, while breaking the temporal

sequence and further suggesting that it was suicide. The fact that The bridge

violates temporal order is not remarkable in itself given that many texts do just

that, but it does pose a question with regard to the role of temporal seq uence in the

coherence of the story.

The primary role of The bridgeis to set the theme of the novel as a whole

what Laura really did and why, and the even t's role in the sequence is significantly

less relevant. W e should probably note that among all the patterns of presenta tion

mentioned in Leech and Short, the chronological may be the most obvious, but

neither the most common nor the most interesting stylistically. Classical

narratological accounts (e.g., Genette, Bal, Toolan) argue further that a

chronological presentation is never really just chronological, given that there are


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what makes chronological disruptions interesting is not that they occur, but how

they affect the understanding of the story. A flashback does not just break the

sequence, but breaks it so that important aspects of story construction are

highlighted such as the character's current psychological state or the way in

which past actions affect future choices.

Assuming thatB starts the way it does in order to establish the main them e of

the novel allows us to also see how the m ain narrative spaces are initially setup.We

have already looked at the way in which the text signals the suic ide space, along

with its twin, the accident space. Later, towards the end of the section Iris refers

to notebooks which Laura left for her to read:

(2).

. .the stack of cheap school exercise books that she must have hidden that very

morning .. .. knowing would be the onetofind them.

The reader can assume that the notebooks contain information explaining Laura's

decision to killherself which only Iris, the narrator, can have access to. Another

space is thus set-up, the no tebo oks space, subordinate to the suicide -spa ce. It

is structured similarly to the boo k space in theH uck Finnexample above in

both spaces the written text contains information (fictional story, letter, testimony ,

etc.) which may be available to a person if the physical object containing the

information can be accessed. The novel makes it clear that the content of the

notebooks -space is now known to Iris and that it may explain Laura's reasons.

But the space, similarly to the suicide -space, is merely signaled, and is expected

to be elaborated throughout the narrative. In spite of their skeletal topology, the

spaces will continue to structure the reader's understanding of the unfolding text,

as new information is added.

The acciden t -space, which is initially introduced in The bridge is further

elaborated on the next page, in a clipping from The Toronto Star which describes

Laura's death as an accident. Many of such clippings are spread throughout the

text, creating a running com mentary on the events narrated by Iris, presented from

the official or public point of view (which the reader will gradually learn to

associate with Ir is's husband, Richard Griffen). Together, the clippings structure a

shared v iewpoint space, where no new information is added, bu t the story told by

Iris is given its public dimension. Just as an exam ple, the first fragment talks about

accidental deathofMiss Laura C haseand adds thath er car swerved. The choice

of words here avoids attributing any intention to Laura, in contrast to The bridge


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The expressions such asdrove, the carswerved orexercise booksfunction as

narrative place-ho lders for mental spaces which can only be signaled at this point

in the narrative. They are expected to be expanded in the ensuing narrative and are

presented scontributing to the topology or framing of other narrative spaces. Such

place-ho lder or portal expressions can be calledn arrative anchors,since they

open access to spaces which are only partially set up. As further exam ples will

show , narrative ancho rs may not only set up spaces to be elaborated later, but they

also build cross-mappings that link different narrative spaces, add structure to

them, and prompt projections which set up subsequent levels of narrative blends.

They are, then, expressions w hich con tribute in specific ways to the construction of

constituen t spaces and the resulting network. As I will argue , any story relies on a

number of narrative spaces and, while it may eventually yield a chronological

understanding of the events, it develops its structure on the basis of developing

links and cross-m appings. The setting up ofthe specific input narrative spaces and

the overall organization of the network constructed through the text depend in a

crucial way on narrative anchors.

The concept of conceptual anchors emerges first

in

Hu tchins' discussion ofthe

role m aterial objects may play in blending . In order to play a role, they have to be

perceived, but, as Hutchins suggests, (selectively) perceiving objects is a step

which does not need to be treated separately from (also selectively) projec ting them

into blends. Hutchins comments further that material objects as anchors have the

stability required to serve in further computations, since they are capable of

h old ing conceptual elements in place. The discussion of material anchors such

as clocks or calendars makes it clear that anchors do not have any intrinsic qua lity,

but rather have to be used in a certain way, so that material elements are used as

proxies for conceptual elements.

Narrative anchors, as I discuss them here, share some features with material

anch ors. They have a m aterial form in some sense, since they are written

expressions in the text. They are used in connecting or representing conceptual

elements (narrative spaces and aspects of their structure) and they are not

inherently predestined to play the role of anchors, but narrative structure may select

them to ho ld parts of narrative structure and cross-space links in place. In other

words, they participate in blending processes in ways somewhat similar to their

material counterparts.


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The novella (which will be termed fiA7-space, as a sub-pace of the overall BA

story) is much more elaborate than other spaces in the network it is an

independent text but its links to the rest of

the

text ofBAare not obvious. There

are numerous aspects of

the

BAJwording which give

it a

special place in the overall

narrative.

First, there are no proper names in the text. There are two characters, referred

to throughout via third person pronou ns heandshe.Personal pronouns may play

very significant roles in texts

see

Em mott, Constructing Social Space ), and there

are some narratives where pronouns are the only referring expressions. But in the

case of BAl which is situated within the context of the rest of the novel,

establishing the referents of the pronouns is a necessary part of understanding the

whole

story.

The question of howcloselyBA

needs to be blended into the n etwork

starts with these pronouns.

It

is

possible to assume that the text constructing theBA l narrative space could

be just what it ostensibly is a post-modern romance, and any resemblance

between the characters inBAl to other characters inBAcounts merely as playfully

teasing the reader. On closer inspection, though, the links between BAl and other

narrative spaces are most certainly meaningful. The logical chain which starts with

discovering the identities of the lovers referred to as he and sh e leads to the

discovery of crucial aspects ofthe story

as

a whole, such

as

the identity ofthe author

of the novella constituting the BAl space, and, perhaps most importantly, the

explanation of La ura 's reaso ns. In other words, the final story cannot be

constructed without incorporating the structure of theB i/-spac e. At the end of her

autobiograph ical narrative. Iris explicitly fills some (but not all) gaps , but she also

adds that the reader could have discovered the untold facts without her help.

Indeed, the reader

can

only do this by recognizing the anchors that linkBA to other

spaces, and it is unlikely that all these links were purely coincidental.

As I will show below, approaching the text as a network of interconnected

narrative spaces reveals unexpected richness of meaning, while at the same time

giving coherence to various narrative devices which could otherw ise be construed

as impediments.

The text ofBAl starts with aPrologue:

(3) She has a single photograph of him. She tucked i t into a brown e nve lope . . . between

the pages of Perennials for the Rock Garden where no one else would ever look the


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142 Barbara Dan cygier

In reality, pho tographs, like books, are material anchors for representation spaces.

The image in a photograph is like a timeless window to the specific time and space

represented, whether identifiable or not. In the novel space, the photo plays a

similar role for the characters, but its description also works as a narrative anchor

for readers. The pho tograph is in fact the most am biguous of the anchors inBA,for

a num ber of reasons. First, it is the only record of her and him together, but

there is the han d of yet another, anonym ous, person. So the story involves three

participan ts, not just two the han d is an anchor to the construction of another

participant in the story. Also , the photograph is hidden in another book so that

by discovering the owner of the book the reader can work out who sh e is.

In fact, the Prologue to BAJ mimics the role The bridge plays in BA it

prov ides the narrative anchors needed. But there is an important difference. W hile

The bridge sets up the narrative spaces the novel as a whole will elaborate and

explore, thePrologueopens up spaces needed to fill in the narrative structure ofits

higher narrative, the BA, notBAJ space. Everything captured in the photo - the

picnic, the man w ith a cigarette, or the hand cut off

by

the margin belongs in the

structureof

BA,

but the woman inBAJholding the photograph is the link between

the two sp aces. In spite of ostensibly writing theB story as an autobiography . Iris

does not tell the reader all that she knows, so the rest is said through BAJ.

A

reader w ho exploresThebridgeand theProloguecarefully enough will then

receive plenty of opportunities to understand the role BAJplays in the story as a

wh ole. Just as an example, the identity of the man inB AJis easily established by

cross-links such as the following description of the events at the Button Factory

picnic:

4)Thenhe took apicture forthe paper with hiscamera....AlexThomas raisedhis hand

as iftofend him off. BA)

TheBAJanchor of the photograph, representing the picnic and the man's gesture,

now links the man to a character in BA. The story-structuring power of such

anchors is quite substantial. Once the reader recognizes the man in the picture as

Alex , all that is known about both Alex and him begins to characterize Alex and

his participation in the

events.

The story being told

in B is

not coherent without the

added inputs, though it remains very traditionally chronological, and in order to

construct the complete story the reader has to incorporate information from BAJ

intoBA.Since this is a pattern affecting most of the events that can explain La ura's


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causal links and deeper understanding of the characters and their motivations

not a surprising observation at all, but often back-grounded in narratological

discussions of the story .

Another anchor of crucial importance is the identity of the woman in BA/.

Here the narrative prompts are significantly more misleading, as they point

alternately to Laura and to Iris. Indeed, they are intentionally misleading. The

interesting question here is why the reader follows the promp ts and assumes one or

the other oft he women to be the she character in BAl without explicitly being

asked to do so. The text, in whichever sense, does not require such a conscious

enquiry, and, as the comments by some critics suggest (cf. Roy),BAl could be

treated as an independent story, simply elaborating some of the themes. Without

the narrative structuring work that the reader does, however, the novel would be

rather incoherent. Narrative anchors are story-level devices relying on the reade r's

search for coherence the descriptions of identical gestures in identical situations

have to be considered relevant when the identity of one of the (gesturing)

characters is unclear, or the whole text becomes mess of conflicting story snippets

and no coherence is possible. The cross-space links established and the plot

elements read into narrative spaces establish narrative coherence across

different spaces, which, as the goal of story-construction, leads to narrative

comprehension.

Though literary critics writing about The Blind Assassin have much to say

about the significance of, let 's say, use of color or the recurring them e of violated

women's bodies (Perrakis, Roy) in search for the more abstract levels of

interpretation, narrative structure is not included in these consid erations. The

fragmentation and deliberate deception are treated as com ponents of post-

modern style, while they are, in this case, features of narration. They require that

the participating narrative spaces be integrated, via narrative anchors and cross-

space projection, into the final emergent story. The emergent blend is not

dependent on any of the individual spaces alone, but on the story-construction

mechanisms.

The last ofth e major narrative spaces inThe Blind Assassinis another piece of

fiction, embedded inBAl. It is a pulp science-fiction story, composed during the

secret meetings ofthelovers. As the reader can conclude, the man, who is in hiding

through most of the story, makes a living publishing such popular fiction. Not


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Barbara Dancygier

to the genre , is murky. The only obvious indication of the link with the main story

world is the character of a blind assassin I will refer to it, then, asBA2.

The story told in theBA2-space,which is in fact never finished, takes place on

the planet of Zycron, where blinded children weave carpets and young women,

with their tongues cut out, are sacrificed on the ceremonial altar, after being raped

by the lord of the underworld. With its style, themes, and genre the story

constituting theBA2space seems ou t of place in the novel as a whole. W hile critics

carefully pick out some of the themes (blindness, rape, practices equivalent to

sacrificing young women by marrying them off to rich but cruel husbands, etc.),

they do not mention any of the important narrative contributions the fiy42-space

makes by filling in the gaps in the main story line.

According to the mental spaces analysis proposed by Schnepf BA2 sets up a

set ofroles,to be matched with valuesin other spaces. Role-value links are among

the most salient mechanisms of mental space networks. In the most standard case,

the frame of the US political system profiles the role of the President, (with its

attendant duties and privileges), but also demands that a specific individual (the

value) is determined by elections every four years. The role-value link, once

established, allows speakers to access the value-individual through the role, and

vice versa. If

speaker saysG eorge Bush wasth governor of Texas,she might be

referring to the role (the current president held a different political office before),

or the value (the man called George Bush held a political office before). The roles

are typically established within an appropriate frame, and the frame may be

constructed in spontaneous discourse, supported by an understanding of what

lexical items mean (the buyer and seller roles in the scenario evoked by the verb

sell , or determined socially (the President). Proper names typically represent

values, rather than roles, while specific phrases designate roles rather than values.

Establishing the role-value links across spaces thus gives mental access from

one space to the other. If the roles designated by the story inBA2(the king, the m ute

girl to be sacrificed, the blind assassin, the lord ofthe underw orld) are matched with

the names of characters in BA, the cross-space links thus set up are of the most

com mo n and inconsp icuous kind, but there is a significant narrative gain, as access

across narrative spaces fills more gaps in Iris s story. Let us consider jus t o ne

example, as discussed bySchnepf.In BA2,the lord ofth e underworld plots against

the king. He hires a professional (blind) assassin to kill the king, and also gives a


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mute girl, and that the lord of the underworld is Iris's husband, Richard, and,

finally, that the blind assassin is Alex. The events leading to Iris's encounter with

Alex and to her marriage to Richard now become known. It is clear that it was

Richard w ho hired Alex to set Iris's father's factory on fire, and that Iris was forced

to marry Richard in exchange for financial help for the family. Most importantly,

we could not find out about Richard's role in the fire and the resulting damage to

the Chase family from Iris alone. She does not know about all this. But w hen it is

framed into the story that Alex tells her (under the pretence of 6/42), overall

coherence is preserved, since he is the only person who knows what really

happened then. Consequently, the gaps in the plot of

BA

could not be filled in any

other way.

At the same time we should note that coding the real story into what Alex

writes is not as artificial a narrative device at it might seem Alex could not

simply tell Iris about

is

role in the fire and thus adm it to have ruined her family and

her own life in the process. Instead, Alex makes this convoluted confession as if he

were inviting Iris to do what the reader does blend the narrative spaces into a

coherent story.

This aspect of story construction is also particularly interesting from the

linguistic and stylistic point of

view.

The main charactersofB A Alex and Iris, are

referred to in different narrative spaces via different referring expressions: proper

names inB A pronouns inBAl and role descriptors in BA2.Since there are hardly

any other ways to refer to people, the BAl and BA2 narratives exhaust all the

available options of identifying a character, without coming up with other proper

names. The linguistic construction is dauntingly simple, but the results spread

through the entire story.

Most surprisingly, the critical work on the novel that I have seen does not

acknowledge the role

ofBA

as a story-constructing factor, instead focusing on the

aspects of the character's construction (such as blindness or mutilation) which do

not quite work w ithout the rest of what

BA

contributes (cf. Perrakis, Roy, W ilson).

For exam ple, when these critics notice that Iris describes the marks of violence on

her body and that the sacrificial virgin in BA2is also mutilated and is meant to be

raped, they use these observations to talk about the treatmen t of w om en 's bod ies as

one of the themes ofth e novel. The critics' focus on such them es effectively allows

them to ignore narrative structure. But the links between the roles inBA2and the


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146 Barbara Dancyg ier

not know (though perhaps guesses) that, even more ironically, her lover's leftist

views have destroyed her father, a fair employer, only to supplant him with a

ruthless business magnate. The inclusion of BA2 is also crucial with respect to

viewpoint managem ent. Given thatB and B Al are told from Iris 's viewpoint,BA2

is the only part of the narrative that can provide parts of the story not available to

her, and so Atwood creates a masterly construction where Alex's viewpoint is

blended into the rest of the text. Again, the major contribution a narrative space

makes to the story is not related to its temporal sequen ce, but to its coherence and

focus on character motivation.

The links among the major spaces prompt an explanation of the title The

Blind Assassin. The phrase, while ostensibly coined to refer to the group of

professional killers in BA2 acquires a specific m etaphorical m eaning on the basis

of the KNOWING IS SEEING mapping, whereby expressions such as unclear

transparent vision being in the dark being illuminated etc. are used to describe

epistemic states. It is also metaphorically conventional to call a personblindwhen

they lack understanding. Building on this easily accessible mapping, many critics

assume that the blind assassin in the title is Iris (cf. Wilson, Bouson) she

unknowingly causes her sister's death, by casually informing her that the man

Laura loved died, and thus rem oving her reason for living. But it is possible to use

the same metaphorical argument in combination with the actual narrative, and then

Alex emerges as an even better candidate for the role. Like the blind assassin in

BA2

he is paid to commit a crim e, and he does what he is paid for, but then falls in

love and steals the precious bride from his employer. But he is also metaphorically

blind, for he could not foresee that the knowledge of his affair with Iris will kill

Laura in the end.

Furthermore, in the story in BA2both lovers are mutilated he is blind, but

she is mute. As Schnepf shows in detail, being a sacrificial bride and being made

unable to talk app lies to Iris in a straightforward way. Iris matches the description

of the girl in B A2as swollen with words and describes her own forced silence in

similar term s. In BAshe is telling her story for the first time, and still hides much

ofit even though she

s

the framing narrator. The role ofthe blind assassin

s

thus

ambiguous, but the interpretation suggested in BA2 seems better supported.

4.

Conclusion

As was noted in the introduction, cognitive approaches to the narrative are


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Narrative Anchors

understanding of how stories create their own logic, and how that logic is then

extended over other mental dom ains. What I have argued in this article, though, is

that the search for cognitive underpinnings of the narrative can and indeed should

include renewed focus on the text.

As the discussion above suggests, linguistically relevant choices of referential

expressions, verbs, or mental space builders can influence the understanding of the

narrative in ways which affect both the very interpretation of events and cha racte rs'

minds, and the narrative structure as such. These choices matter for specific

elements of the story-S the text tells, the identity of the characters, and the very

understanding of its main them es. They do not do so, however, by directly adding

information in the way we expect all texts to do , but by prom pting meaning

construction beyond the text as such through setting up n arrative spaces and links

across those spaces. In other words, mental space structure mediates between the

meaning contributed directly by the text and the meaning emerging from generic

principles of narrative construction as such.

The questions regarding the mental status of story-S which I posed at the

beginn ing cannot yet be answered in full, but the concepts introduced here answ er

some of

them.

The story em erging from any particular text is the intermediate level

of m eaning, with its own charac teristics. On the one hand, the con struct builds on

the more specific mean ing contributions of textual dev ices, while being framed on

the other hand by the general narrative concepts such as chunking or search for

causation. W hile the text prompts a myriad of mental spaces, it also uses narrative

anchors to privilege those which participate in story construction I called them

narrative spaces. The readers' search for overall story coherence helps in

recognizing the signals given textually, hence some (often significant) differences

in the readers' responses.

The sequential nature of the story (traditionally treated as its defining

characteristic) is a result, not the constitutive feature. Furthermore, events do not

form a linear chronological sequence instead, they cluster together to form

larger and larger hierarchically organized blended structures. The resulting story is

therefore a multi-layered network of narrative spaces which yields a sequence,

even if only a roughly conceived one, as a consequence of its organization.

The final narrative structure of

heBlind ssassin

can be roughly represented

in Figure 2, with the emergent story being the final product of the integrated

network of spaces set up in the course of the text. Som e of its spaces (like the


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148

Barbara Dancygier

v-point: Iris

notebooks

v-point: Laura

Iris remembers

BA

v-point: Iris

BAI

v-point: Iris

BA2

v-point: Alex

accident

v-point: Iris

Emergent Story

Fig 2.

comparison, the spaces participating in the central blend BA, BAI and BA2) are

effectively telling the same story and they do so by prompting for cross-space

connectio ns, for identity blends (Iris is she and the mute girl) and for the overall

integration of various aspects ofthestory presented in the input spaces in the guise

of independent narratives. BA remains the main narrative space which projects

most of its structure into the emergent blend (as indicated, among others, by its

reliance on proper names), in contrast toB AJandBA2,which contribute plot and

characterization pieces to fill in the gaps inB A.It might not be accurate, how ever,

to callBAa framing narrative (for exam ple in the sense described by Herm an in

Genette meets Vygotsky ). The relationship among the various spaces is much

less that of embedding, and is more appropriately described as integration, which

poses a further question of the cogn itive benefit of such stories (in contrast to

framed stories, which Herman discusses in terms of distributed cognition).

The B lind Assassinis a thought-provoking laboratory experiment in narrative

spaces construction and blending , but the process is, I argue, the same in fictional

narratives of

ll

kinds, even though they m ay be ostensibly less fragmented. In the

analysis above, I have focused on selected aspects of story-construction, and the

role of narrative anchors in the emergence of stories as blends of participant

narrative spaces. Numerous questions, however, are still not formulated, let alone

answered. How do narratives distinguish various kinds of narrative space

interactions? How is viewpoint established and maintained? H ow are the different

spatial and temporal features of the inputs reconciled in the blend? How is


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Narrative Anchors ' ^

conceptualization device are numerous and intricate. It seems, however, that

conceptual integration offers tools which might help us propose more and more

accurate answ ers.

Note

' Narratologists use a number of two-fold or three-fold distinctions here

(fabula / sjuzhet, story / text, story / text / narration, etc). Because the focus of my

discussion is on the tension between the story and everything else, I will stick to the

'story' versus 'text,' while elaborating the concept of 'story-S.'

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Story Construction in the Blind Assassin