Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the emotional aftermath and personal crises that can follow traumatic events like war.
Margaret Atwood's quote starkly illustrates how the end of war does not necessarily equate to a return to normalcy for individuals, particularly for those who have been deeply affected by the conflict. The act of Laura driving a car off a bridge symbolizes a profound struggle with despair and the lingering scars that war can leave on personal relationships and mental health, emphasizing the theme that survival does not mean healing.
In practice
In a discussion about the mental health impacts of war veterans, this quote can emphasize the hidden struggles they face.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
We need Grace and forgiveness.
Isn't that the problem? That women have been swindled for centuries into substituting adornment for love, fashion (as it were) for passion?
I had relationships with men as well as women. I wasn't choosing; I didn't think I had to.
Sara waited a respectful time, knowing there was nothing she could do to ease the woman's pain. Grief was a place, Sara understood, where a person went alone. It was like a room without doors, and what happened in that room, all the anger and the pain you felt, was meant to stay there, nobody's business but yours.
I don’t care about anyone, and the feeling is quite obviously mutual.
My relationship with cats has saved me from a deadly and pervasive ignorance.
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