Patricia Nichtern
March 31, 2011
Professor Zino
Esaay 2
A Flatness that Stretches Deep into the Mind
In “Death by Landscape”, the main character, Lois, uses landscape paintings to bridge
the distance of time in her memory back to when she was in Camp Manitou. The sudden
disappearance of her friend, Lucy, is constantly on her mind even as she grows older. They
never found her body therefore Lois is not left with any closure and doesn’t even know, for
sure, if she did in fact die. This causes Lois to be uneasy anywhere in the wilderness and even
looking at a landscape painting reminds her of the place where she lost her friend. She has
been consumed with a feeling of wonderment since the disappearance which profoundly
affects her as an adult. The vastness of landscape, both in nature and in paintings, symbolizes
the differences between Lois and Lucy which captivates each other creating a close bond. Lois’
uneasy enticement to the landscape paintings is a result of her feeling lost and helpless without
her friend in the “convoluted tree trunks”, trying to sift through deep into them to find a
resolution (Atwood 100). Interestingly, Lois keeps her distance from actual landscapes, which
mirrors the distance she keeps from her family throughout her life.
As a child, the literal distance between Lois and her parents shapes her character as she
grows into an adult. Her parents first sent her there when she was very young, only the age of
nine. The unfamiliar and vast landscape of the camp contrasting with the familiarity and safety
that her home provided made her struggle with idea of the vast distance between the two. For
her parents, sending their daughter away for the summer allowed them to be “removed from
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the burdens” of parenting for a while (Tuan 122). Lois didn’t like many things about Camp
Manitou, including the distance that was between her and her parents and her home. “She
hated the necessity of having to write dutiful letters to her parents claiming she was having
fun” (Atwood 103). Even though it was expected by her parents that she would enjoy being
away at camp for the summer, at first she didn’t and “she could not complain” to her parents
“because camp cost so much money” (Atwood 103). Lois assumed that her parents had sent
her there because they thought it would be fun for her and because the idea that they were
trying to alleviate the burden of her temporarily is not something a child wants to believe
although it did occur to her. She “suspected her parents of having a better time when she
wasn’t there” (Atwood 103). This distance between her parents also made her want distance,
initially, between the other girls at the camp. She didn’t like being in such close quarters in a
cabin with seven other girls; she wanted space from them as well. Lois is constantly struggling
with the restrictions of space and the fear of too much space and distance. “Bottom bunks
made hers feel closed in and she was afraid of falling out of top ones” (Atwood 103). This
shows that Lois is uneasy with a space that should offer either coziness, in the bottom bunk, or
a sense of freedom, in the top.
There was a symbolic distance between the relationship of her and Lucy that
foreshadows the literal distance she will have when she loses her friend. Lois and Lucy have
many differences, but despite them and because of them they immediately create a very close
bond. They are from different countries and backgrounds; Lois is from Canada and Lucy is from
the United States. Lucy’s parents are very wealthy and are in a higher socioeconomic status.
Lucy lived in a house in Chicago on a “lake shore and had gates to it, and grounds” (Atwood
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104). The difference in socioeconomic status between the two girls is shown in their attitudes
towards the camp. Lucy “would make the best of it, without letting Lois forget that this was
what she was doing” while Lois knew that paying for the camp was a burden on her parents
therefore didn’t complain when she initially didn’t like it (Atwood 104). Lucy had a confidence
in her that Lois did not possess. “Lucy did not care about the things she didn’t know, whereas
Lois did” (Atwood 105). Lois enjoyed teaching Lucy all of the things that she had learned at
camp over the years; it gave her a sense of confidence with a friend that she felt inferior to.
Every summer, Lucy had something to boast about from her year spent away from Lois. In
comparison, Lois’ life seemed boring and ordinary and this made Lois feel even more distant
from Lucy but still intrigued by her life and stories. The two girls had overcome their
differences and relied upon each based on their strengths and weaknesses.
When they went on the canoe trip, Lois was uneasy with the distance from the camp
and the vulnerability of being in middle of the water. She felt “the water stretching out, with
the shores twisting away on either side, immense and a little frightening” (Atwood 107). When
Lois and Lucy stop at Lookout Point and climb up to the summit, far away from everyone else,
Lois sees the “sheer drop to the lake and a long view over the water” revealing how far away
they’ve come (Atwood 111). This distance down to the lake symbolizes the distance between
Lois and Lucy and the apparent differences in their characters. Lucy is daring, confident and
unafraid and she steps close to the summit to see the drop closer. Lois, on the other hand,
“gets a stab in her midriff” when she sees how close to the edge Lucy is, showing that she is
afraid ; afraid that her daring friend might jump or fall (Atwood 112). When Lois tries to
remember the “shout”, the last thing she ever heard out of Lucy she cannot be totally positive
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how to interpret it (Atwood 112). Lois, nor anyone else, ever finds out what happened to Lucy.
Everyone else assumes she is dead but Lois never gets closure and believes Lucy “is nowhere
definite, she could be anywhere” (Atwood 117). This idea consumes Lois ever since that day
and she is haunted by the fact that her friend was never found. The uneasiness of the literal
distance between them now is overwhelming to her and she cannot escape it. “The greater the
distance the greater the lapse of time, and the less certain one can be of what has happened
out there” (Tuan 121).
Lois lives in the “borderland between the objective and the subjective realms” (Tuan
121). The landscape paintings are the “mythical space and time” in which Lois spends trying to
find and reunite with her friend. This “borderland” is the subjective realm which “signifies
the…’inner’ aspect of (her) experience” at Camp Manitou which adversely affects Lois
throughout her life (Tuan 120-121). Ironically, Lois can remember most of days at the camp but
it is difficult for her now to remember “having her two boys in the hospital, nursing them as
babies”, “getting married, or what” her husband “looked like” (Atwood 117). She was
consumed with the idea that Lucy was still out there somewhere; in the woods by the lake or
somewhere in the vastness of a landscape. She “never felt she was paying full attention” to her
family (Atwood 117). She distanced herself from them, just as her parents did to her. She also
distanced herself from “any place with wild lakes and wild trees” because of the uneasiness
that the landscapes made her feel. This objective “reality is the historical physical universe”,
but for Lois there is no certainty in what happened to Lucy therefore she was torn between the
objective and subjective reality, constantly drifting between both (Tuan 120). Her subjective
reality is that Lois is still out there somewhere and “lies in the realm of expectancy and of
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desire” (Tuan 120). The distance between Lois and Lucy is part of Lois’ objective reality but
with “limits… (that) stretches away from (her) to the remote distance…at which details cease to
be knowable” (Tuan 121).
Lois feels as if she lies somewhere within the landscape paintings that she surrounds
herself with. When Lois looks deep within them she can “see time ‘flowing’ through space”
(Tuan 124). Looking into them is her “backward glance” she has “already trodden” and by
doing so the “past and the future can be evoked by the distant scene” (Tuan 124). This
backward glance both into the past and into the future fills Lois with the uneasy realization that
“as far back you go (into the painting), there will be more” and that she will never come to any
sort of closure as to the whereabouts of her friend (Atwood 118). In the landscapes paintings
Lois sees another world; a world which Lucy is still a part. Through the landscape paintings, Lois
is “living not one life but two”; reality and her subjective reality (Atwood 117). Lois does not
just see a flat surface in the paintings but a “larger totality” and the distance that is represented
in them (Casey 263). Lois does not visualize any sort of background in these landscapes; “only a
great deal of foreground that goes back and back, endlessly” (Atwood 118). Lois “projects”
herself and Lucy “onto the landscape” every time she looks into the paintings and imagines that
Lucy is behind one of the farthest trees depicted in the landscape, somewhere in them “she’s
there” (Casey 261) (Atwood 118). They represent for Lois an “opening up and opening out of a
scene, a panoramic sense of unending space (and …also time)” (Casey 265).
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Arthur Lismer, Sunlight in a Wood (detail), 1930
This landscape painting represents the type of painting that Lois can see Lucy in. There
is no background in this painting and the depth that is portrayed by the artist conveys a sense
of vast distance in which the viewer is never able to cover completely. Lois imagines that Lucy
is somewhere in there, not behind the “convoluted tree trunks” that are in the foreground of
the painting, but far back in distance and in time, behind a tree that is not quite visible.
Lismer’s painting correlates with Lois’ feeling about the Camp Manitou and the lake; “immense
and a little frightening” (Atwood 107). This painting does not give the viewer a sense of
calmness that some landscape paintings do, but rather a more confused feeling as if you can
easily get lost in those woods or trapped under the tree trunks. It forces your eyes to jump all
over the canvas “scoping out…the limits of a perceptual scene” while never being able to find it
(Casey 264).
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Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Death by Landscape. New York: Doubleday, 1991.
Casey, Edward S. Rethinking Nature: Essays in Enviornmental Philosophy. Eds. Bruce V. Foltz
and Robert Frodeman. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004.
Lismer, Arthur. Sunlight in a Wood. 1930. Art Gallery of Ontario, Ontario. AGO: Art Gallery of
Ontario. Web. 3 Apr. 2011.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of
Minnisota Press, 1977.
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