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.
I'm a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me, because of the image they've made of me and that I've made of myself, as a sex symbol. Men expect so much, and I can't live up to it.
There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them.
From the moment I leave my house or my hotel room, the public owns me. The public made Alice Cooper and I can't imagine ever turning my back on my fans.
It's funny about men and women. Men pay in cash to get them and pay in cash to get rid of them. Women pay emotionally coming and going. Neither has it easy.
Their quarrel was no more surprising than are most quarrels — inevitable at the time, incredible afterwards.
The discovery that heartbreak is indeed heartbreaking consoles us about our humanity.
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