Introduction
Death by Landscape is a story authored by Margaret Atwood; the story is about Lois. She is an old woman when the story begins whose two sons have already grown up, and the husband is long dead. Lois loses her close friend, which makes her distance herself from her loved ones. This story seeks to analyze the extent to which Lois is responsible for her loneliness. This paper will look into the protagonist’s actions, which end up destroying her life and making her lose peace. Lois is to blame for her loneliness.
Main body
“The Death by landscape story” begins with Lois reminiscing about her past life in Camp Manitou. The protagonist recalls how she found the camp distasteful when she initially visited it (Atwood,1990). Lois remembers how she disliked the songs the girls were singing to prove that they enjoyed the camp (Atwood,1990). However, soon she settled in and made few friends here and there, and since then, her life changed, and she enjoyed the camps.
This becomes evident when we see that she visits the camps several years afterwards until the incident happened. The main reason why Lois goes to the camps for several years is her new best friend Lucy, who hails from a wealthy family. The two girls become crazy friends who even burn a used Pad to commemorate Lucy’s first periods (Atwood,1990). This portrays that the two of them became attached. Nonetheless, this strong attachment to Lucy makes Lois lonely up to the point of isolating herself from her family after Lucy goes missing mysteriously. Lois claims she couldn’t remember her husband’s face which proves that she chose not to move on after losing her friend, it’s like all her marriage was just an imagination.
Moreover, Lois fails to handle the tragic loss of her friend Lucy positively, and it becomes a thing that destroys her life and isolates herself. In the book, we see Lois claim that she was living in a “Condominium apartment where the only plant life was in the pots located in the sonatarium” (Atwood,1990). This proves that her friend’s death affected her and made her detach herself from nature and humanity. All her life she had been isolating herself as she was the only child in her family.
She had spent her teenage years with Lucy and after the tragic loss her life became miserable and unsatisfactory. Lois claims that “she felt like she was living two lives, one with her family and the rest with Lucy” (Atwood,1990, p.3).
The story depicts that Lois enjoyed life when she was with Lucy, and in her old age, she only recalls the moments they shared with Lucy and not with her family. The text also depicts that she didn’t even remember how her children grew up (Atwood,1990). In her old age Lois was still lonely and isolated in her apartment. She likens her loneliness to that of Lake Ontario which she could see from her apartment. She relocates to a consortium apartment and keeps blaming herself for the death of her friend, something that deters her from living on with her life (Atwood,1990). This somehow portrays that she had a choice to move on, but her bond with Lucy is so strong that moving on isn’t a choice for her.
Conclusion
From the story and the analysis of the protagonist Lois, it is evident that tragic losses are bound to happen in life, but what matters is how a person handles life after this loss. Lois fails to move on from the tragic incident, which affects her life and makes her isolate herself from nature and humanity. She is not aware of how her children had grown as the only thing she recalls is her dead friend and the escapades they had in the past camp days at Camp Manitou. The story teaches the reader that they ought to move on with life and handle losses positively, as the failure to do so may make them waste their lives just like the protagonist Lois did. Thus, it is justified that Lois was responsible for her loneliness, which followed her to her old age.
Reference
Atwood, M. (1990). Margaret Atwood: Conversations. Ontario Review.