Chapter summaries The Margaret Atwood 4-Book Bundle Margaret Atwood

Chapter 67: The Chestnut Tree – Summary and Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The narrator reviews her own writing and acknowledges that it is wrong—not because of what she included, but because of what she left out. She notes that truth is not a simple equation; two and two may equal a voice or the wind. She recounts a vivid dream: she wakes to a clinking sound, sees a chestnut tree outside her window (a tree from her former home with Richard), and a man foraging in the garbage. The man looks up, smiles, waves, and walks away. She feels a choking grief and cries out “No, no, no, no,” waking Richard behind her—then she wakes again, truly. She lies in her real single bed with a wet face, realizing she rarely cries awake. She reflects on youth’s assumption that people and things can be discarded, only to return in dreams. The real clinking sound comes from raccoons raiding recycling bins. She wishes them luck and returns to bed, listening to an absent breath.

Key Events

  • The narrator rereads her own account and feels it is incomplete; she meditates on the nature of truth.
  • She experiences a nested dream: first, a dream of waking to pebbles at the window, seeing a chestnut tree and a man.
  • In the dream, the man looks at her, waves, and departs; she cries out and imagines Richard behind her.
  • She wakes a second time, now in her real room, face wet from tears.
  • She notices raccoons outside and watches them scavenge.
  • She offers the raccoons a silent blessing and returns to bed, listening for breathing that isn’t there.

Character Development

  • The narrator (Iris): Demonstrates a maturing awareness of memory’s fallibility. Her reflection on omission versus truth shows a writer’s guilt. The dream sequence reveals unresolved grief and longing for a lost person—likely Luke (from earlier chapters) or the freedom he represented. Her dry waking tears underscore a life of suppressed emotion.
  • Richard: Appears only as a presence in the dream, a figure about to touch her neck, suggesting control or menace that lingers from their marriage.
  • The man in the dream: Likely Luke, a past lover. His silent wave and departure symbolize irreversible loss and the narrator’s inability to call him back.
  • The raccoons: Mirror the narrator’s own scavenging for meaning; their masks evoke deception or hidden identity.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

  • Truth and omission: The chapter opens with a metafictional meditation—what is left out defines truth as much as what is recorded.
  • Dreams and layered reality: The nested dream (waking within a dream) shows how the past intrudes on the present and how the mind can be trapped in unresolved experiences.
  • The chestnut tree: A symbol for a place that no longer exists; it connects the narrator’s past with Richard and a lost home, but also with the man in the dream.
  • Scavengers and survival: The raccoons adapt and take what they can. Their presence contrasts with the narrator’s emotional emptiness.
  • The living bird vs. labeled bones: The text rejects mere facts; the truth of a person cannot be reduced to a skeleton of events.

Why This Chapter Matters

Chapter 67 is a turning point in the narrator’s interior journey. It reveals that she is still haunted by a lost love, despite her outward composure. The meta-reflection on writing and truth invites the reader to question every earlier account in the novel. The dream sequence foreshadows a confrontation with the past that will become central to the final part of the story. The raccoons’ survivalist ethos also mirrors the narrator’s own hidden drive to keep going by taking whatever sustenance she can find.

Study Questions and Answers

  1. What does the narrator mean when she says “two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth”?
    She is rejecting simple logic or fact-finding as a path to understanding. Human truth involves emotion, dream, and omission—facts alone are as inadequate as a bird’s labeled skeleton next to the living creature.

  2. Why does the narrator feel a “choking pressure around the heart” when the man walks away?
    The man in the dream is almost certainly someone she loved and lost. His wave of departure, combined with her inability to call after him, reignites the grief of that separation. The dream forces her to relive the moment of abandonment.

  3. How do the raccoons function as a symbol in the closing paragraphs?
    The raccoons are scavengers taking what they can from the junk of others. The narrator identifies with them: she too is picking through her own discarded memories, hoping to find something of value. Their “thieves’ masks” mirror the way she hides her true feelings from the world.

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