Explication

Margaret Atwood's novel "Bodily Harm" has many elements of Polti's 28th dramatic situation, Obstacles to Love. The book portrays "the need for compassion that goes beyond what we ordinarily mean by love"(Back page summary), and the main character Rennie is inexplicably torn by romance and love, leaving her broken and scared, and best representing the heart wrenching obstacles of love.

Rennie Wilford, the main character and journalist, is going through major changes in her life. She is a quiet woman who would rather "[write] things about people...than be the one [that] got written about"(Atwood, 19), and so she doesn't deal with her emotions in conventional ways, she makes them into journal entries and news articles. A few things happen to Rennie to kick start her emotional upheaval, each playing a significant part in her life and affecting her equally. Her Grandmother has passed away, and Rennie loved her Grandmother, she would say "my grandmother is amazing for her age"(Atwood, 123) in admiration, so she feels that an important part of her is missing. She has be diagnosed with breast cancer, and has her left breast taken out to leave her scarred and self-conscious. She has also recently lost her boyfriend, Jake, who leaves without an explanation in the book, but is mentioned in flashbacks and painful or euphoric memories. After her house is broken into, Rennie is scared and alone, and this is just the beginning, or catalyst to her negative state of being.

Rennie is in a troubled state of mind, often referring to herself as "damaged, broken and amputated"(310), reflecting the way many women feel after a surgery. Rennie feels very exposed and vulnerable because of her surgery, she thinks to herself "she is in remission. Remission is the good word, terminal is the bad one. It makes Rennie think of bus stations: the end of the line." This feeling of remission is the leading cause of why Rennie feels the need for a man in her life. She is desperate to find some one who will take care of her; to provide some sort of soothing relief from the reality she doesn't wish to dwell in. She has love affairs with three men in the story - though only two are really significant - each offering her a different type of love, and Rennie offering them the same insecurities.

Jake is the boyfriend who leaves Rennie suddenly, abandoning her with an empty apartment and a new life to adjust to. Rennie's fear of solitude is magnified by the unknown burglary that takes place at her home, and she is constantly afraid of everything. She loved Jake very much, because he was "impossible to put down"(Atwood, 8), and proud of his physique and attributes, everything Rennie wasn't. Jake was not a sweet man, though she may have found ways to make him seem sweet, the flashbacks relating to him made him seem disgusting and pig like; a real jerk. Rennie feels insecure around him, but she preforms sexual favours for him because that is what he wants, never what she wants. She puts on a show for him, making herself believe that she is powerful and in control, when really, he is in complete control of her. When she returns from her surgery, she is in need of support, and the reminder that Rennie is still beautiful. Jake does not offer her this kind of compassion, when they make love Jake refuses to touch her chest, and makes the situation awkward and uncertain, leaving Rennie to feel self-conscious and upset. However, Rennie needs to have a man in her life, to occupy her and make her forget about everything for a while, and Jake seemed to be the detached somebody to keep her mind elsewhere. Rennie wants to be loved and cherished, and Jake can never seem to provide for that request, causing an obstacle in Rennie's relationship with him, and in her love for herself.

The second man Rennie meets is Daniel Luoma, the doctor in which she visits with for post-surgery requirements and check ups. From the moment that Rennie first met Daniel, she says that she "fell in love with him because he was the first thing she saw after her life had been saved"(Atwood, 27). She doesn't know Daniel when she decides that she is in love, but he has provided for her what no man in Rennie's life has ever provided before, a life saving gesture that is for the single benefit of Rennie alone. Daniel, though she knows this not to be entirely true, cares for Rennie enough to make sure that she is happy, a blessing for Rennie. She "imprinted on him"(Atwood, 25), because Daniel is the nicest man in her life, and weeks after the surgery Rennie meets with Daniel and discusses life and insecurities, openly, like Rennie has never done before. But there is a catch, the obstacle to Rennie's perfect love and possibly Daniel's too, the doctor-patient relationship that holds them apart. Daniel also has a wife and children, providing another obstacle between them, but he is also in love with Rennie. They meet secretly to discuss what is to happen, but Daniel is too faithful and a "dutiful husband and father"(Atwood, 139). He is miserable when he tries to explain why he can't go to bed with her, or be with her for that matter, and she is left again with an empty part of her that just wants to be loved, to be taken care of.

Rennie is a broken woman in search of a man who will stitch her up again. On the one hand, there is the devoted but sleazy boyfriend Jake, who will kindly take her mind away from her hardships, if there is a sexual favour involved. And on the other hand, there is the kind and compassionate Daniel, who saves Rennie's life figuratively and literally, and they can never be together. Among the hundreds of other issues surrounding Rennie Wilford, love is the one part of her life that she is missing regretfully, and it is also the one part of her life that could heal her completely. She is grasping for straws throughout the entire novel, falling down a dark hole of despair and clinging to men as rocks to keep herself elevated. Her insecurities and self-doubt make a hard obstacle to maneuver around, for she is never able to fully give herself to the men she wants, regardless of other hardships in the way of that type of commitment. She is the victim of a tragic love triangle, and must over come her dependency on men to fully gain the self confidence she needs. This sense of forbidden, lost, and impossible love gives the story an emotional and dramatic twist, amping up the seduction and adding a more personal element to the novel's political genre. Without the use of Obstacles to Love, Rennie's story would be incomplete and without the intriguing element of romance, a must have in stories with a female protagonist. A wonderful example of a never-attainable-love, and a classic representation of a dramatic situation evoked by heartbreak and romance.