Death By Landscape

“[Lois] is relieved not to have to worry about the lawn, or about the ivy pushing its muscular little suckers into the brickwork, or the squirrels gnawing their way into the attic and eating the insulation off the wiring, or about strange noises. This building has a security system, and the only plant life is in pots in the solarium.” 

One of the first hints that Lois has experienced something traumatic comes in the story’s opening paragraph. Although the squirrels and ivy are more annoyances than anything else, Lois appears to feel real anxiety about them; the reference to a security system is especially significant, since this will have no practical effect on plants but does seem to make Lois feel safer. This nervousness around nature clearly stems from Lucy’s disappearance in the Canadian wilderness, but it’s noteworthy that Lois’s concerns in this passage don’t really mirror the circumstances surrounding that disappearance. Lucy ventured out into the natural world on the canoe trip, whereas Lois here imagines the natural world invading her home. This speaks to the effect Lucy’s disappearance has had on Lois’s sense of herself and her own abilities—she now sees herself as a passive victim—but it also perhaps reflects Lois’s need to believe that Lucy didn’t vanish voluntarily; instead, she pictures nature as something aggressive that could attack and kill her friend.

“Despite the fact that there are no people in [the paintings] or even animals, it’s as if there is something, or someone, looking back out.”

The above passage is an example of Atwood’s use of foreshadowing; by the end of the story, Lois concludes that the supposedly “empty” landscapes actually conceal