English paper

Some say that men hold all the power over women. Some may even say that a man’s influence controls a woman’s decision. In “The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window” Joy Harjo is using a woman’s fragile story to show us that we all make our own decisions and are in complete control of our lives. The poem tells us how a woman’s past experiences and choices led her to where she is right now, on the 13th floor window in a tenement building in east Chicago thinking about killing herself. She has the power to end it all or change her future.

Women hold the key to their success, not a man. We are the ones who decide our fate and control our destiny. At the beginning of the poem, there was a line that stood out to me. Joy Harjo states, “They could be a halo, or a storm of glass waiting to crush her” (5-6). What Harjo is doing here is using metaphors as a form of the woman’s life. The word halo can been used in terms of her life being saved and her decision not to commit suicide, or a storm of glass waiting to crush her, meaning she will kill herself and shatter her life and all of the lives of everyone who cared about her. Her decision is based on her own thoughts, not those of a man or anyone else. Harjo is showing us that women have the power to decide what is their fate.

Women often have to make important choices in their lives. They have to decide whether to let a man take control of their lives or will they have a voice. They have to decide if they want children, want to be successful, want to make a life of their own. All these choices have consequences, and all those consequences effect their life long term. Harjo writes, “But she is the woman hanging from the 13th floor window, and she knows she is hanging by her own f...

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.... She holds the power to change her life. Harjo doesn’t say whether or not the woman does commit suicide all the more proving that she has the ultimate choice. Women have control over their own lives and should never let a man or anyone else influence their decision to live their life the way they want to. Harjo illustrates throughout this poem that no matter who is in our life, whether it our children or significant other, we are the only ones who can control our destiny. Our past experiences and choices have led us to where we are today and nobody can tell a woman how live, what to wear, how to feel and what to say. The outcome of the woman’s life is completely up to her. We all have the power to make our own decisions and we all choose how we live. Some say men hold all the power in the world but the truth is that we each hold our own power and key to our destiny.