Death By Landscape

Lucy is Lois’s childhood best friend, whom she meets during her second summer at Camp Manitou. Unlike Lois, Lucy is American, but her mother is from Canada and actually attended the camp herself. She initially seems unimpressed by Camp Manitou; Lucy comes from a wealthy family, and the camp is “one of the better, for girls, but not the best” (Part 2, Paragraph 3). This indifference—unlike Lois, Lucy “[does] not care about the things she [doesn’t] know”—seems to make a powerful impression on Lois, as does the revelation that Lucy’s parents employ a full-time maid and that her father wears an eye patch (Part 3, Paragraph 10). Lucy’s good looks and money make her an exotic figure to Lois, as well as a model of the kind of femininity girls are taught to aspire to; Lucy is blonde, with “large blue eyes like a doll’s” (Part 3, Paragraph 11).

Even relatively early on, however, there are hints that Lucy is dissatisfied with her life and, in particular, the feminine role she is expected to adopt as she grows older. Lucy’s physical appearance reads as innocent, but she uses it to get away with petty rule-breaking, sneaking out at night, and stealing matches: “[Lois and Lucy] rarely got caught at any of their camp transgressions. Lucy had such large eyes, and was such an accomplished liar” (Part 3, Paragraph 16). Lucy’s frustration deepens as she enters her teenage years and becomes more aware of the adult world of sex and romance. She dislikes her stepfather, seems disdainful of her mother’s adultery, and (assuming she’s telling the truth about having a boyfriend at all) is frustrated by the class snobbishness that already governs her own romantic experiences: “She had a boyfriend, who is sixteen and works as a gardener’s assistant […] She has been forbidden to see him and threatened with boarding school. She wants to run away from home” (Part 4, Paragraph 1).

Lucy’s frustrations come to a head during the canoe trip, when she confides to Lois that she doesn’t want to return home to Chicago. Her disappearance, whether it is understood as suicide or as a supernatural phenomenon, is the fulfillment of this wish; Atwood emphasizes that the cry Lois hears after she leaves Lucy alone by the cliff isn’t a frightened one, implying that Lucy welcomes whatever happens to her. Lucy—always the more daring of the two girls—seems to do what Lois unconsciously wants to do: reject adult womanhood in favor of the adventure and innocence of girlhood.

Cappie is the head of Camp Manitou, which her parents established and passed on to her. Cappie is a middle-aged woman with “fawn-colored hair that looked as if it was cut with a bowl,” who only truly appears relaxed and “luminous” while leading the girls in song (Part 2, Paragraph 11). Although in retrospect Lois respects Cappie for managing to keep the camp open through the Depression, she also suspects that Cappie has had difficulty living up to her parents’ expectations; Cappie has an “anxious” need for things to run smoothly and to “cause joy” (Part 2, Paragraph 11). This explains why she responds the way she does to Lucy’s disappearance and pressures Lois to admit to being involved. Cappie’s entire life revolves around Camp Manitou, and if she is going to lose it (as she ultimately does), she wants to at least understand why: “[Lois] could see Cappie’s desperation, her need for a story, a real story with a reason in it; anything but the senseless vacancy Lucy had left for her to deal with” (Part 8, Paragraph 16).

Kip and Pat are two counselors at Camp Manitou: “Kip is no-nonsense; Pat is easier to wheedle or fool” (Part 6, Paragraph 1). Together, they accompany the girls on their canoe trip, and they take the job seriously; Kip tells the girls off at one point for splashing one another with their paddles, and when the group settles down for lunch, the two counselors “do their woodsy act and boil up a billy tin for their own tea” (Part 6, Paragraph 24). They later question Lois about Lucy’s disappearance and mount an extensive search, with no results.