Pantheism, Status of Religion and the Picture of Nature in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing

MUHAMMAD EHSAN, Atta-ul Mustafa

Abstract


Human beings have a natural instinct to identify themselves with something powerful in order to gain some kind of spiritual relief or peace of mind and soul. Conventionally people turn to God or Christ but history witnesses that the question of existence and quest for a non-conventional religious deity for a complete harmony of heart and soul is an ever acknowledged fact. I find the same phenomena in Margaret Atwood’s second famous novel Surfacing. The research will express my stance that in Surfacing, the search for a non theistic deity, i.e. nature and the process of self-realization (pantheism), go side- by-side and the narrator finally succeeds in identifying herself by having a direct association with the nature which serves as a source of spiritual guide for her.


Keywords


Religious deity; Nature; Pantheism; Non theistic deity and self realization; Atwood’s Surfacing

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/8811

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