Atwood Blog

YOu're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill.
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.

Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.

Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that done to you
the day of the lawn party
when you came inside flushed with the sun,
your mouth sulky with sugar,
in your new dress with the ribbon
and the ice-cream smear,
and said to yourself in the bathroom,
I am not the favorite child.

My darling, when it comes
right down to it
and the light fails and the fog rolls in
and you're trapped in youroverturned body
under ablanket or burning car,

and the red flame is seeping out of you
and igniting the tarmac beside your head
or else the floor, or else the pillow,
none of us is;
or else we all are.

In her poem, A Sad Child, Margaret Atwood uses flashback and metaphor to highlight the transition of a child into a woman and the subsequent loss of innocence by the speaker of the poem. Using slight metaphors without giving away the explicit details of what transpired during what can assumed the female speaker's childhood, we can see the social feminist commentary Atwood wants to give through the plight of the distressed speaker.
A first evidenced in the first stanza, Atwood uses the cataloguing of excuses and material cures to the deep sadness felt by the speaker to give the reader an idea of how children are given the quick brushoff, with hormones at the blame for everything, resulting in what could be true sadness as merely of the age. The doll, hat, coat and pet mentioned in the first and second stanzas showcase the material things the female speaker received as a substitute for the true attention the speaker desires. This flashback gives insight as to how the speaker's view of her life's problems was shaped by the treatment of her true feelings.
The second use of flashback to the day of the aforementioned lawn party brings insight into what can inferred to address the first menstruation cycle of the speaker, a disturbance to the metaphot of the purity and innocence of the new dress and sugar around the mouth of the small girl. " I am not the favorite child" Atwood writes, the menstruation cycle and it's dismissal as chemical and of the age merely registering as a destructive agent of her innocence. The flashback to the fog rolling in is a metaphor to further this event as fog is somewhat disturbing and consumes all of the light around it, drowning the speaker in her sadness. The red flame, or blood, is seen three times with the use of flashbkac, once when told to lie down, once, the first day of menstruation, and the third when the speaker is consumed by her sadness and crashes, seeing the once dismissed blood and realizing it is only a part of being human, and things happen to everyone, ending in the final two lines, " none of us is; or else we all are" meaning the favorite child. Atwood serves to address the discriminatory dismissal of women's emotions by society

Punishment

Punishment by Seamus Heaney can almost take the role of a social commentary, with it's enphasis upon a ruined beauty that could have defied the laws of her Catholic church. In the poem Heaney uses the death scene of a lover viewing the ruined corpse of a girl gone astray to emphasize the theme of judgement. In the first stanza we see the imagery of viewing the body, with the halter of what could have been a dress distorted around her body so that she appeared naked. The second stanza blows her nipples to bear a strong resemblance to amber beads, something that is reflective of the rosary for the Catholic church. One of the the metaphors shown in this poem can actually come from the econd stanza as well, with the starved ribs of the girl bearing a resemblance to the rigging of a boat, as the corpse is later revealed to be floating upon a body of water, drowned in a bog to be specific. Her physical description is furthered with metaphors bearing that of ruined beauty, a shaved head and a tar-black face. Seamus Heaney saw a lot in his life involving the fight between Protestants and Catholics within Great Britain, and this poem can be a direct commentary upon that. The adulteress, as she is portrayed in the poem was judged by her sisters, who could have the the sisters, or nuns, of the convent, in which all people of God are required to remain abstinent. Heaney's take on this was that of someone who scapegoated her, being the person to bring her into her final judgement.s