Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2010-01-13:

"But the main idea is the first one: hanging on, staying alive. Canadians are forever taking the national pulse like doctors at a sickbed: the aim is not to see whether the patient will live well but simply whether he will live at all. Our central idea is one which generates, not the excitement and sense of adventure or danger which The Frontier holds out, not the smugness and/or sense of security, of everything in its place, which The Island can offer, but an almost intolerable anxiety. Our stories are likely to be tales not of those who made it but of those who made it back, from the awful experience -- the North, the snowstorm, the sinking ship -- that killed everyone else. The survivor has no triumph or victory but the fact of his survival; he has little after his ordeal that he did not have before, except gratitude for having escaped with his life." -- Margaret Atwood, writer, in her book Survival, comparing the dominant symbols of the literatures of the United States (The Frontier), England (The Island), and Canada (Survival).

(submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach)