#415 Lusus Naturae- Margaret Atwood
This is a much different story than the first few in the
collection. The narrator is going through a change, a Kafka-esque
metamorphosis, turning slowly into a werewolf. They call it a disease, but they
also think of it as a curse. The town is steps away from pitch-forks and
torches, so the family stages her death, for their own sake, especially to protect their other daughter.
Now she lives hidden, but with anonymity comes a little more
freedom to roam about at night. A funny moment is when she comes stumbles
across a couple having sex in the woods, she thinks they are of her kind
because they have fits and scream like she does. But when she approaches to
give them a friendly kiss, all she knows how to do it bite.
Like the Kafka tale this is a worthy homage to, it’s about alienation,
and being isolated and ostracized because of ones differences; being made to
feel like a burden and the cause of other’s feeling of resentment.
“However she tried to hide it, she resented me, of course.
There’s only so long you can feel sorry for a person before you come to feel
that their affliction is an act of malice committed by them against you.”
Lusus Naturae is Latin meaning: freak of nature.
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