Truth vs Storytelling
What do you understand about truth and storytelling in the novel?
These chapters tell us some key information about how the world of the Penelopiad views the truth and myth. In the Anthropology Lecture, the maids deeply interpret their own lives as legend, a chapter that may initially be viewed as reaching for meaning, but as the maids address, is as valid as any other myth in Ancient Greek mythology. Men place such deep value on their lives, over interpreting the mundane and making that their own truth. Each Chorus Line chapter is a different rendition of this truth, told in a great variety of mediums from many different stories and perspectives, highlighting a key idea that Atwood tries to express: the truth is what we make it. In this chapter, the Maids are taking back the voice and agency that they never had in their lives, the ability to tell their own story and hence express their own truth.