Quest For Meaning

Margaret Atwood (1939- ), Booker Prize winner, is called"Queen of Canadian Literature"because of her worldly acknowledged contribution to and her reputation in Canadian literature as well as her popular and academic fame. Since the day of publication, her second novel Surfacing (1972) has received international fame and positive reviews in scenario, narrative, characterization and other aspects, from critics around the world. Scholars home and abroad have done various researches to deepen the understanding of the various aspects of this fiction and its author.Surfacing successfully portrays a spiritually survived Canadian artist; the novel proves to be the writer's spiritual quests on female role, on Canadian identity under the American influence, on ecological balance in a modern world and on the truth beneath the cultural myths. During the quest, all the lost memories, the suppressed and trapped self, the victim motif and the hidden and concealed meanings are surfacing. Based on Semiology, this thesis analyzes the multiple meanings of the novel and the progress of how meanings are gradually surfacing, detects the interior quest of the novel—meaning, and eventually understands deeper and more about Atwood's means of artistic expression and her guiding ideas.Apart from the introduction and the conclusion, there are altogether three chapters in the thesis: Chapter One discusses the relationship between signs and the possibility of plural meanings, which is helpful in the comprehension of the applied theory, the followed two chapters and then the whole construction of the paper. Chapter Two, based on the victim motif, discusses the formation of social myths in the novel by Atwood; then the basic myths are listed out and demystified. Chapter Three handles five types of codes respectively; it is a further proof of the existence of the hidden meanings, and a strong argumentation for final conclusion.