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“Now that I am dead I know everything.” (Penelope) To what extent do you consider this to be true in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad?
Penelope says she knows everything in death, but throughout the novel, this is contradicted time and time again. Atwood writes about the theme of truth, ad how there is no single truth that can be confirmed but rather many stories from many different perspectives, a world of lies and deceit for anyone to make their own tale. There is no truth for Penelope to know, there simply isn’t anything that can be confirmed or known. She says it herself: ”Now that I’m dead I know everything. This is what I wished would happen, but like so many of my wishes it failed to come true”. Atwood tells us that there is no truth, or even that the truth doesn’t matter, only stories and perspectives and people and their lives.