Margaret Atwood's Death By Landscape

Nature is a predominant element throughout the short story by Margaret Atwood, “Death by Landscape”, because it represents a much deeper meaning as death and loneliness are constant themes in this short story. In this paper, I will argue that she is able to use nature to represent the overall story and make it a significant aspect of the reading. Then, I will demonstrate how Atwood represents this message through her careful use of diction, and effective descriptions of places and events that take place. Atwood uses nature to represent a theme in this short story through many significant aspects of Lois’ life. These include the fact that Lois dislikes the outdoors, the paintings that she collects, and even her childhood experience at camp. Lois appears to dislike the outdoors and “is relieved not to have to worry about the lawn, or about the ivy pushing its muscular little suckers into the brickwork…” (course package 3) in her new …show more content…
Nature is where Lois loses her friend, her sanity, and her innocence. Lois had many paintings in her home later in life, and ensured her apartment would be big enough for all of them. The artists which she collected “painted mostly in the twenties and thirties and forties; they painted landscapes.” (course package 3) These paintings incorporate nature and are quite significant to the story as they further explain what is going on in Lois’ mind and connects this to her past experiences at camp. We discover these paintings are a coping mechanism for Lois, and these paintings allow for her friend, Lucy, to live on and for Lois to further heal. “Everyone has to be somewhere, and this is where Lucy is. She is in Lois’s apartment, in the holes that open inwards on the wall, not like windows but like doors.” (course package 9) Lucy remains in Lois’s life through the paintings of nature, where coincidentally everything took