discovering the themes and symbolism in poem this

This Is a Photograph of Me

In beautifully constructed wording it is important to get meanings and themes to be conveyed to us within a unique and interesting way. Margaret Atwood uses a large number of literary devices so the target audience can really experience her poems and arrive to a better understanding through her amazing narrative voices. In the composition, “This is a Photograph of Me, ” Atwood uses haunting, eclectic imagery to get the piece to life and support its mysterious theme.

The first image we receive from the composition is in the title itself. The image is a great actually “image” of the narrative voice. We have a pretty good option that the “photograph” of the narrator will be showed us by straight-forward subject. As we begin to delve into the poem itself, we find that it appears to be a “smeared print” at first. This imagery ideas to us quite virtually that there is a lot more to this image than “blurred lines and grey flecks blended with paper” and on a far more hidden level it discloses something much deeper that we discover in the last mentioned half.

In the second stanza the narrator, “she” if you will certainly, begins to guidebook us through a deeper understanding of the cryptic blurriness of the print. The girl points out to us not really a branch, but a “thing that is like a branch. ” This increases the mystery from the picture and begins to develop a curiousness regarding our narrator. We are displayed “part of the tree rising, ” which gives another touch to secrets which will soon “emerge” and become revealed. There are also “a delicate slope, a little frame home, ” which in turn would ordinarily have a positive meaning, but the “ought to be” in front of the two descriptions, provides images the ambiguity and mysticism just like the rest of the poem.

Another stanza includes a two-line sentence in your essay which explains the background of the photo. We are told of “a pond, and beyond that, a lot of low hills. ” In the presentation as a short, independent image, seems far away and dream-like. Then, in the last stanza, our company is told by narrator this is a picture taken after she drowned. It is very surprising, especially after the still, muted images we have been painted, although not too unexpected because the symbolism prepares you for the true intent of the narrator’s tone.

Inside the fifth stanza, she tells us she is in the heart of the picture, just below the surface. The imagery is simple nevertheless very effective. We all begin to patch together the “hidden” image of her body, currently dead for the day in that calm, grey water. Rapidly when compared with13623 simple description we ponder many things, which are not solved. Who is each of our narrator? Just how is she showing this “story? ” Whom took the picture? Her murderer? The search party? A photographer unknowing about what was “just underneath the surface? inch

Inside the sixth stanza, the unconformity continues with all the narrator unsure exactly where her body was or how large or tiny. These are simple descriptive queries that push us having a subdued horror. Then you will find the image that seems to summarize the whole a sense of the composition: “the effect of water within the light can be described as distortion. inch The whole photograph is a contortion of the harsh reality in the situation. Within the last stanza, were informed that if we seem long enough we will see her. Again, a line it doesn’t make sense and leaves all of us questioning the mysticism and blurriness from the piece. Can she actually “emerge” if we keep looking?

With each stanza we are unveiled a further meaning. Concrete floor imagery with the photo shows the mysteriousness, and in the very last half, the imagery chemicals the doubtful and the intangible. We are kept uneasy and wondering, just like the blurry symbolism presented.