Analysis of Against Still Life by Margaret Atwood
In the poem Against Still Life, poet Margaret Atwood fascinates us by weaving her words into descriptive feelings we can all relate too, especially women. Atwood is a well known poet and novelist who has a certain way of grabbing the attention of the reader and throwing the reader’s thoughts around without her even realizing it. In Against Still Life for example, Atwood opens her poem with an orange, nothing more than an orange. By the end of the poem she has got the reader pondering what men think about. It is assumed that Atwood is the speaker of the poem and the setting is simply a situation most of us can find ourselves in often.
The speaker of the poem is Margaret Atwood herself. She describes thoughts that would only belong to her. Atwood uses the word “I” to describe herself in the poem and “you” to describe a second party other than the reader, who we later find to be a man. The poem, seems as though it is directed as a thought to the man, not a conversation or a poem for him to read, but Atwood’s desire to know this man’s thoughts. Atwood is clever, and describes feelings and the frustrations that any woman has felt about a man. This makes us really wonder if Atwood truly feels this way, or if she is just describing feelings that a general woman have about a general man. I believe Atwood did this on purpose not only to more easily relate to the reader but because she once said in a lecture, “Plato said that poets should be excluded from the ideal republic because they are such liars. I am a poet, and I affirm that this is true. About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives… I of course -- being also a novelist -- am a much more truthful person than that. But since poets lie, how can you believe me?” (Atwood). This suggests that maybe Atwood doesn’t really feel this way about a man, she could have made the whole thing up simply to please and relate to her readers, but then again, she could be telling the truth.
Atwood’s attitude in the poem is very demanding and unknowing. She is a woman who wants answers about a man.
Both awe-inspiring and indescribable is life, the defined “state of being” that historians and scholars alike have been trying to put into words ever since written language was first created. And in the words of one such intellectual, Joshua J. Marine, “Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful”. Essentially, he is comparing life to a bowl of soup. Without challenges or hardship into which we can put forth effort and show our potential, it becomes a dull and flavorless broth. But for characters in novels like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the difficulties and trials that we all must face can transfigure the mundane liquid mixture of existence into a vibrant and fulfilling gumbo. The protagonists of these works are two strong-willed and highly admirable women, who prevail in the face of overwhelming odds stacked in everyone’s favor but theirs. In their trying periods of isolation brought about by cold and unwelcoming peers, particularly men, they give their lives meaning by simply pushing forward, and living to tell the tale.
The readers are apt to feel confused in the contrasting ways the woman in this poem has been depicted. The lady described in the poem leads to contrasting lives during the day and night. She is a normal girl in her Cadillac in the day while in her pink Mustang she is a prostitute driving on highways in the night. In the poem the imagery of body recurs frequently as “moving in the dust” and “every time she is touched”. The reference to woman’s body could possibly be the metaphor for the derogatory ways women’s labor, especially the physical labor is represented. The contrast between day and night possibly highlights the two contrasting ways the women are represented in society.
These lines demonstrate the stage of adulthood and the daily challenges that a person is faced with. The allusions in the poem enrich the meaning of the poem and force the reader to become more familiar with all of the meaning hidden behind the words. For example, she uses words such as innocence, imprisonment and captive to capture the feelings experienced in each of the stages. The form of the poem is open because there are no specific instances where the lines are similar. The words in each stanza are divided into each of the three growth stages or personal experiences.
Atwood, in The Handmaid’s Tale, uses the voice of Offred to explore the juxtaposition between life before The Society of Gilead came into power and the life during the society’s power. Through flashback Offred frequently retells stories from her old life, the reader is able to see the discrimination that the women now face and the unfairness of this. Offred seems to live half in The Society of Gilead, and half in the past. Only in memory does she have any sort of freedom. The reader empathises with Offred and the injustice of her situation. Although Offred can remember the old ways she is happy that she has been given a chance in The Society of Gilead, ‘Humanity is so adaptable, my mother would say. Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.’ This encourages the reader to empathise with Offred’s lack of freedom. The reader can see that Offred is unhappy, but they can also see that she believes she could be worse off and that she is happy that she has a place within the society. Similarly, in The Color Purple, Spielberg uses the narration by Celie to influence the viewer to identify the cause of women. The narration by Celie establishes the views that the society has, and how those views can be damaging to the women of the society. It also shows how control can affect a person. ‘She said she write, she
She questions “why should I be my aunt / or me, or anyone?” (75-76), perhaps highlighting the notion that women were not as likely to be seen as an induvial at this time in history. Additionally, she questions, almost rhetorically so, if “those awful hanging breasts -- / held us all together / or made us all just one?” (81-83). This conveys the questions of what it means to be a woman: are we simply similar because of “awful hanging breasts” as the speaker of the poem questions, or are we held together by something else, and what is society’s perception on this? It is also interesting to note Bishop’s use of parenthesis around the line “I could read” (15). It may function as an aside for the reader to realize that the six year old girl can in fact read, but also might function as a wink to the misconstrued notion throughout history that women were less educated and didn’t
As one of America’s leading contemporary poet’s, Sharon Olds is known for the intense personal and emotional poetry that she writes. Her ability to intimately and graphically divulge details of her personal life allows readers to delve into the deepest parts of not only her mind, but of their own as well. Sharon Olds uses her writing to allow readers to experience the good and bad of life through her eyes, yet allows readers the interpretive freedom to define her works as they fit into their own lives. Olds’ ability to depict both wonderful and tragic events in stories such as “First Thanksgiving” and “Still Life in Landscape”with beautifully gruesome clarity allow readers a gritty real-life experience unlike any other.
The dialogue a narrator uses with characters in a short story reflects on how the story is being understood by the reader. A character’s dialogue is assumed to be controlled by the author, and then the reader comprehends the dialogue through different points of view in which is told by a narrator. Which point of view the author uses can change how the reader may understand the story. Understanding a story is not just based off the ability to comprehend the plot, setting, characters, and theme. But importantly, understanding what point of view the narrator is in and whether the narrator has dialogue with characters within the story is important. The short story “Lusus Naturae”, written by Margaret Atwood, it’s a short story told by a first person narrator who is a main character in the story but has very minimum dialogue with the other characters. Another short story, “Sonny’s Blues”, written by James Baldwin, is
Another aspect that can be derived from this poem is Atwood’s father’s obvious intentions to give her an awareness of the many adversities life can obtain. He has made sure she leads a life that doesn’t result from a spoiled childhood. He made her attentive of a hard days work, which is probably one of the best things a father can teach his child. It is absolutely essential that parents in general teach their children the many hardships life may behold. This gives the child a better direction in means of future obligations.
‘The woman’ of the poem has no specific identity and this helps us even further see the situation in which the woman is experiencing, the lost of one’s identity. Questions start to be raised and we wonder if Harwood uses this character to portray her views of every woman which goes into the stage of motherhood, where much sacrifice is needed one being the identity that was present in society prior to children.
The speaker begins the poem an ethereal tone masking the violent nature of her subject matter. The poem is set in the Elysian Fields, a paradise where the souls of the heroic and virtuous were sent (cite). Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and
Jane presents one aspect of woman in The Waking collection (1953): Ross-Bryant views Jane as a young girl who is dead. The poem expresses concern with the coming of death. This poignant elegy is presen...
Since 1961, Atwood has produced a highly acclaimed body of work that includes fiction, poetry and literary criticism. Atwood published her first volume of poems, Double Persephone, in 1961 (Toronto), followed by many more throughout the next three decades, interspersed with novels, including The Edible Woman, Surfacing, Lady Oracle, Life Before Man, Bodily Harm, The Handmaids Tale and The Robber Bride. (Contemporary Literary Cri...
Evelyn Cunningham once said, “Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their oppressors.” For thousands of years women have been oppressed, not in the bondage of slavery but in the bondage that comes from a lack of education and a dependence on men for their livelihood. Women have been subjected to scrutiny and ostracization, belittling and disparaging comments, and even at times they have been feared by men. Women themselves have even taken on the beliefs that they require a man in their life to be taken care of and have a satisfying life although some women and even some men have seen that the differences between the sexes is purely physical. This oppression, as well as the enlightenment of some, is well noted in many literary works. Literature has often been an arena for the examination of the “woman question,” as it was termed in the Victorian age. Four works that examine the role or view of women in society are John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women, T.S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and Carol Ann Duffy’s “Medusa.” Although each work examines a side of the woman question in its own way with a variety of views on the question, all of the works examine the fear that women incite in men, the idea that women are dependent on men, and the idea that women are separate from men in some way and each piece works to show that there is actually an interdependence between men and women that is often not expressed.
While other writers use their poetry to decipher the meaning of life, Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea was busy writing about how to live it. Five of her poems, “Jupiter and the Farmer,” “The Tree,” “The Shepherd Piping to the Fishes,” “Love, Death, and Reputation,” and “There’s No To-Morrow,” convey strong messages to the reader about how to live their lives. In her poetry, Anne Finch uses anecdotes to help illustrate the validity of her statements, thereby providing the reader with a strong, meaningful, and important message about how life should be lived.
This, in fact, is an example of “dynamic decomposition” of which the speaker claims she understands nothing. The ironic contradiction of form and content underlines the contradiction between the women’s presentation of her outer self and that of her inner self. The poem concludes with the line “’Let us go home she is tired and wants to go to bed.’” which is a statement made by the man. Hence, it “appears to give the last word to the men” but, in reality, it mirrors the poem’s opening lines and emphasises the role the woman assumes on the outside as well as her inner awareness and criticism. This echoes Loy’s proclamation in her “Feminist Manifesto” in which she states that women should “[l]eave off looking to men to find out what [they] are not [but] seek within [themselves] to find out what [they] are”. Therefore, the poem presents a “new woman” confined in the traditional social order but resisting it as she is aware and critical of