Imagery In The Poem Cell By Margaret Atwood

In the poem “Cell”, Margaret Atwood contrasts the cancer cell against the popular, negative image. The author uses literary devices such as imagery, figurative language, structure, and perspective to create the contrast. The result makes the reader consider the cancer cell in a new light. There is beauty in a cancer cell and we are not as different from cancer cells as we think. The author uses kinaesthetic and visual imagery to describe the cell throughout the poem. The imagery is heavily tied with figurative language. The first visual imagery found in the poem is the comparison to a flower. The author first beseeches the reader to “look objectively”, and the reader will find that the cancer cell is comparable in its beauty to a flower.

This time, the cancer cell is compared to an “alien” on the “cover for a pulpy thirties sci-fi magazine”. This comparison draws on our fear of the strange and the unknown and reminds of the bizarreness of the cancer cell. The common connotation with fictional aliens is that they are an outlandish but sophisticated race, often cruel and invasive towards humans. The author implies the same is true with cancer cells in this comparison. The alien is described as “a success”, indicating its efficiency and deadliness. The alien, or the cancer cell, is “all purple eye and jelly tentacles and spines, or are they gills”. Humans do not have tentacles, spines nor gills, this clearly shows that the alien is nothing like us. It is notable that the colour now darkened to “purple” from the initial “mauve” and “pink”. This could indicate a darker side of the cancer cell as the poem progresses in tension. The author chooses to use an uncertain “or are they gills” to show that we do not thoroughly understand cancer. The alien cell “creeps around on granular Martian dirt red as the inside of the body”. For the first time, the cancer is moving, and it moves in a furtive, scheming fashion. The inside of the body is compared to the Martian landscape. The imagery of Mars is an uneven landscape pockmarked by craters, covered in fine, powdery red dirt. Mars is also the god of war in Roman mythology, which escalates the belligerent tension in the poem. The colour red contrasts with previous mentions of “mauve” and “pink”, as well as “purple”. Red is a more passionate, fiery colour, brighter and more intense than the others. Again, this implies the invasion process by the cancer as it wages its war on the