Margaret Atwood and Surfacing

The use of animals in literature as either characters with human qualities or in situations that humans face, has long been a device of authors who hope to creatively convey moral messages in their work. Animals often appear in children's literature such as fables in order to make lessons pleasurable and attractive to young readers. In adult literature, animals and the animal-like are commonly used by authors to demonstrate and instruct readers on lessons in …

…she feels hopeful about is “Beautiful Joe”(p.8), who she sees as being very animal-like. She describes him as being a shaggy, “teddy-bear fur[y]”(p.41), vulnerable, and unthreatening creature like “the buffalo on the U.S. nickel…once dominant, now threatened with extinction.” (p.8) He is not like the other men in her life. In the end, she feels that because he is “only half-formed” (p.192), she can trust him and go to him.