I feel that the title of novel represents a desire to continuously hold on. Within the novel, Kathy copes with the losses in her life by turning to memories of her past. She preserves the memory of Hailsham long after it has closed. She also preserves her memory of Tommy and Ruth. The phrase “never let me go” acts a plea and a demand that reflects the need to hold onto, and be held by those close to us. Kathy’s memories are her way of continuously holding onto things that she has lost and it is a way of holding on to those memories. 

However, Kathy’s memories are fragmented and lack overall accuracy and consistency. Her narrative within the novel shows the process of her recovering and attempting to make some sort of sense of her memories. She states that she forgets and misinterprets details of certain events, showing that memory is fragile. Her first-person narration represents the absence of the other characters’ within the novel and the absence of the characters within Kathy’s memory. Ruth and Tommy occasionally appear through Kathy’s memory, which means that their own thoughts and accounts of events remain unknown to the reader. 

The beginning of the novel introduces the character of Kathy who centralises her narration around Hailsham, which is the school where Kathy grew up with her friends Tommy and Ruth. The memory Kathy has of Hailsham serves as a starting point for all of Kathy’s recollections of the past. Kathy explains that Hailsham is the place where most of her important relationships began, and the recollection of many of her happiest memories.

Noticeably, Kathy is not looking ahead towards the future. Her attempt to hold onto Hailsham defines her life as a carer, as she both revisits the school through her memories and seeks out donors who also attended Hailsham. Kathy also shows effort in trying to stop looking back on her shoulder of the past, and that point when she stops looking back is when one of her donors asks her to share her memories of Hailsham. Kathy has a realisation that she was lucky to be brought up at Hailsham, as the donor simply asks Kathy about her life to forget his own traumatic childhood memories. This scenes shows that Hailsham and Kathy’s desire to recall her memories of it are exceptional.

The ending of the novel is very intriguing because it represents how Grace continually chooses to challenge power. This is evident in when Grace interprets the Bible to show how sophisticated she is in her thinking. She writes down this interpretation by weaving it into her quilt, which shows how women use the materials that they have available to them in order to remake the dominant institutions that would give them a less powerful role.

The possibility of Grace’s pregnancy could highlight the way that women’s bodies are used as metaphors of both life and death in comparison to the bodies of men. Grace is unable to know whether she is pregnant or ill from the abuse of physicians, which shows how society tries to take away the power that women have in the ability to bear a child. 

Grace’s quilt also represents how important Nancy is to her, despite the fact that Grace seems often to have disliked her while she was alive. In this way, Graces’s quilt also represents the collective solidarity of women, and the fact that women- especially those who would buck the social constraints imposed upon them, should come together if they have hopes of freedom and happiness. 

The overall tone of Alias Grace is mostly negative and dull as the novel focuses on the themes of murder, death and poverty. There is also an internal conflict between Grace Mark and society. She holds involvement of the murder and she is guilty of killing two people. Grace seems to be denial of the murders and which brings awareness to her guilt. 

The spirit of Mary Whitney seems to posses Grace’s body, since Grace claims that the window was not open when Mary passed and her soul should not escape. Instead, Mary’s soul enters Grace’s body. An assumption could be that Mary held influence in making Grace commit the murders since her own death. However, the narrative holds a lot of unspoken truths so it is unknown in whether Grace may be telling the truth or even what the truth is. 

Throughout Grace’s narration within the novel, Atwood uses no quotation marks, making it difficult to discern between what Grace thinks and what she says out loud to Simon. The lack of punctuation and constant shifting between narrators highlights the uncertainty in construction a clear narrative of events within the novel of Grace’s past and her present. The novel asks and never explicitly answers the question. There is numerous directions within the narrative to answer this uncertainty, but it is heavily implicitly unanswered. The reader or the characters struggle to grasp the actual truth behind the narrative. 

Atwood observes the society within present day and chooses to showcase the consequences of these problems in a future society. These issues in society form the historical context from which Atwood bases the premise of this novel. By choosing this specific style, Atwood can focus on the aspects which she feels are a problem within society to make the reader consider the way they live their lives. These specific issues are closely related to Atwood’s ability to create a multi-dimensional plot but also to narrow her focus to the scariest issues of society. Atwood closely examines these issues and then exaggerates them to create an image of fear to make the reader question the individual impacts of these specific issues. 

Memory serves as an issue within the novel through the use of narration of the characters of Grace and Simon. Grace’s memory is distorted of the murders of Nancy Montgomery and Thomas Kinnear, as she claims to have no remembrance of it all. Simon loses his sense of purpose and concentration of his memory as he works closely with Grace. Grace seems to bring confusion and misinterpretation to Simon’s memory the more he works and spends time with her. 

Grace holds many traumatic accounts within her memory, such as the death of her mother, Mary Whitley’s death from an abortion, and the murders of Nancy Montgomery and Thomas Kinnear. Grace remembers her mother’s and Mary’s deaths, which give Grace moments of unconsciousness and memory loss. The fact that Grace cannot remember the murders adds to her trauma that she experienced from the past and her present self’s struggle to cope with the current moment. Simon holds an interest in dreams which explores to into our unconscious selves. Past memories may he hidden within his unconscious that he perhaps is trying to reconnect with. Simon had a head injury within the civil war which had taken responsibility in taking away parts of his memory. 

Saleem achieves purity on September 22nd 1965 as he recalls the events that lead up to that moment at midnight. From this he has dreams about Kashmir, which is a symbol of great national pride for Indians and Pakistanis. Since Saleem dreams of Kashmir, it could represent his yearning for the innocence of India that has resulted in war and destruction. As we had mentioned last class, Saleem takes on attributes of  Brahma, which is the Hindu God of creativity. Saleem feels most responsible for the existence of India, which he creates his own identity through the novel. 

The fact that Saleem possessive intuitive abilities could represent an idea that he is using his dreams of the idyllic Kashmir to become a reality to waking life or it could represent his hopes for a better India. Further on into the novel, we more destruction and chaos that is present than recent chapters. Saleem seems to believe that he is responsible for national events that occur, and he is yearning to return to his uncomplicated purity. 

Hanif commits suicide and the entire family gather at the house to complete a forty-day mourning period. On the twenty-second day of the mourning period, Aadam Aziz sees god, which is an interesting event that occurs during the mourning period, as Aadam Aziz struggles with understanding the existence of God throughout the novel. He stands with the Indian culture, as well as following the western educational view point. He mentions to his family that he has a conversation with God about the pasting of his son.

Mary Pereira has an assumption that Aadam saw Joseph D’Costa’s ghost but does not tell anyone. Interestingly, on the thirty-eight day of mourning period, Mary witnesses the ghost of Joseph D’Costa herself. Ahmed recognizes the ghost that Mary speaks of but insists that it is the ghost of his old servant, Musa, who suffers with leprosy and is seeking forgiveness. 

The point of view of this novel is in first person narrative. The narrative is mostly subjective, though omniscience third person narrative is used through the motives and thoughts of the other major characters. The narrative focuses on Saleem Sinai, who is claiming to be phsically falling apart due to the haunting of his past. The story is mostly spread out around the different years of his life, which creates a fragmentary nature of his identity. There is a constant battle with Saleem’s past and present as the narrative takes us back and forth throughout the novel. India as a whole is also fragmented; it is divided into two separate countries. East and west Pakistan are classified as separate countries. New nationalities have been created, in turn this brings in a new form of cultural identity and keeps the constant separation and divide. 

Rushdie discusses the process of crossing cultures and how they create challenges on the basis of who we are as cultural beings. The crossing of cultures allows opportunities for new learning and growth, it gives us the an understanding of not only people from different cultures and their culture in a new environment but an awareness of our home culture. Rushdie explains the importance of being open to crossing cultures, but also to not disregard our former personalities and the cultures which we were born into. Rushdie reflects on this process of self-discovery as he has experienced it in his own life as an immigrant coming to Britain. First he is a Muslim in predominantly Hindi India, then as an Indian migrant to Pakistan, followed by an Indian-Pakistani living in Britain. Rushdie experiences cross-cultural experiences first hand. He explores the familiarity of his home and the freedom of the unknown by living in different culture.