The Blind Assassin

In this section, Atwood delves further into her exploration of the boundaries between the self and others. Throughout Book Six, the unnamed lovers try to work their way inside one another's inner worlds. The woman, for instance, "imagines him imagining her—imagining her walking along the street, closer now, impending" (262). It's not clear, however, that these efforts actually lead to deeper knowledge. The man, for instance, talks about "mak[ing] [the woman] up as she goes along," implying that our perceptions of other people are never wholly accurate, but are instead filtered through our own perspective; even when his lover is with him, the man is still "invent[ing]" her in his mind" (276).

At first glance, the novel itself seems to get around this problem by offering us glimpses into Alex's mind; we see, for instance, what the man is thinking about as he waits for his lover to arrive. This sequence, however, is presumably just speculation on Iris's part, and therefore ultimately another reflection of Iris herself; in fact, the man's thoughts about "inventing" his lover appear just a few pages after the woman has imagined him thinking about her, as if she—like the book's writer—has conjured up the man's inner world. 

This problem of truly knowing someone else suggests another way of thinking about the motif of blindness. In Atwood's novel, characters are blind not only because they can't foresee the consequences of their actions, but also because they can't really imagine perspectives other than their own.In Book Seven, this blindness extends even to us as readers. Iris begins her affair with Alex in this section of the novel, but refers to it only indirectly at the time. Her choice to conceal the affair possibly reflects ongoing feelings of guilt; she describes going up to Alex as an act of "treachery," presumably toward Laura (321). However, the fact that Iris withholds information from us just moments after she has described Richard withholding information from her hints that she may be acting on similarly selfish motivations. Ultimately, Iris's unreliability as a narrator adds another layer to the novel's exploration of what it means to truly know others, even when reading a confessional-style narrative.

Relatedly, Book Sixcontinues to explore questions about the nature of reality and truth, particularly as they relate to fiction. When Winifred chooses Xanadu as the theme for her charity ball, she blurs the lines between reality and art, both by adopting a fictional setting and by (unknowingly) echoing Sakiel-Norn and the various embedded stories that populate Atwood's novel. On the other hand,this section also marks the point at which the story of the assassin and the girl (who run away together) begins to noticeably diverge from that of Alex and Iris (who do not). Their method of escape, however, does link them to a different character: Laura, who we have seen jump in the Louveteau, and who will eventually "escape" from her life by driving off a bridge. These parallels coincide with Iris's later claim that Laura is as much the author of The Blind Assassin as she herself is; perhaps the story of the blind assassin and the girl is also the story of the romance that Laura and Alex might have had, and therefore "true" in a metaphorical sense. 

Book Seven, meanwhile, further complicates Atwood's treatment of truth and realityby calling into question whether Laura's idealism is really as fanciful as it appears. At first glance, it is Iris who seems to have thestrongergrasp of reality. Laura, however, proves to understand Richard's dangerousness much better than Iris, who writes off her warnings as "adolescent melodrama"; Laura's symbolic understanding of her father's death as a murder alerts her to Richard's true nature (328). Although the novel will eventually conclude that Laura's idealism was (in part) responsible for her death, it does not wholly reject her worldview.