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.
Our world is increasingly interdependent, but I wonder if we truly understand that our interdependent human community has to be compassionate; compassionate in our choice of goals, compassionate in our means of cooperation and our pursuit of these goals.
When women's sexuality is imagined to be passive or "dirty," it also means that men's sexuality is automatically positioned as aggressive and right-no matter what form it takes. And when one of the conditions of masculinity, a concept that is already so fragile in men's minds, is that men dissociate from women and prove their manliness through aggression, we're encouraging a culture of violence and sexuality that's detrimental to both men and women.
Just like children, emotions heal when they are heard and validated.
...I realized that I knew less about loneliness than I had thought - and much less than I would know when he went away.
I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.
Even though people may be well known, they hold in their hearts the emotions of a simple person for the moments that are the most important of those we know on earth: birth, marriage and death.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.