Margaret Atwood An End To Audience Analysis

Critical Review on An End to Audience

Literature is important in any one culture. Written word is used all throughout history, and it is transported all over the world. However spoken word is different, it is altered every single time that it is told. Every person tells a story differently, and everyone interprets a story differently. In the speech that Margret Atwood gave, An End to Audience, she uses many personal analogies to show how all a story teller can do is tell the kinds of stories that they wish to tell and hope that someone out in the world will want to listen, even if they are not in the same place or time as the story teller themselves.

Speaking in front of a large group of people can be challenging, especially when the people you are speaking to are board. One common way to “real” the audience in, is by telling a story to wet their appetite with what is to come in your lecture be it whatever it is. Normally the story has to do with the topic of whatever you are doing whether you are giving a speech or you are writing a book about a sailor. Atwood finds herself at a problem, “what kind of stories do you wish to hear?” (11). Instead of telling a story about her

She then goes on to tell a story that her parents would have told. She uses their stories to talk about how stories are true and how they are, “one point of beginning for a novelist,” (Atwood 13). She then goes to explain a second way of a beginning for a novelist. The second way is a story that does not seem real, it is “out of this world”, or mythological. She then shows how, “you have only my word that the first stories are true, and no proof at all that the second one is not,” (Atwood 13). She shows how the first ones felt real and how the second one felt fake, but how in fact there is no proof that the second one was any less fake than the