Margaret Atwood's "Siren Song" - Introduction
Margaret Atwood’s “Siren Song” is one of the poems in a collection entitled You Are Happy. The poem was written in 1974 describing Sirens, a combination of women, fish and bird creatures. “Siren Song” is a free verse poem of nine stanzas and has twenty-seven lines in total. These Sirens inhabited an island and tended to attract mariners due to their beauty and irresistible songs. “Siren Song” is an indicator of some of these songs used by Sirens to attract mariners. Atwood creates a poem adapting the Siren’s perspective and recounts using the first-person voice. Atwood is a brilliant feminist writer who highlights and rewrites an excerpt from The Odyssey poem by Homer due to the gender inequalities it portrays. However, Atwood decided to change the perspective and tone of the poem from the original Homer’s tale to the Sirens’ point of view. She aims to eliminate the socially constructed gender roles that demean the females. This contextual research focuses on the concepts, references and poetic elements relevant to the argument presented in this poem.
Atwood's Examination of Gender Inequalities
Margaret Atwood uses a patronizing tone towards men and a vivacious tone towards women, a sign of higher respect to the roles of women in society. Changing the initial Homer’s point of view in her revised edition, Atwood explores a new perspective of the story. Here, throughout the poem, Atwood tries to examine the negative light of men. Atwood states that “the song that forces men/ to leap overboard in squadrons/ even though they see the beached skulls” (Atwood 4-6). In these stanzas, Atwood portrays how men cannot resist her song despite the signs of death present on the island. Skulls and human remains are scattered on the island where the Sirens are located. In this case, men are presented as dumb and fall into temptations easily which expose them to dangers. Atwood continues to state that, “squatting on this island/ looking picturesque and mythical” (14-15). The Siren is distancing herself from the act of exhibiting herself so that they can attract men. These stanzas show that men have a weakness of seeing women as trophies. Atwood states that Siren squats and looks picturesque hence depicting that men follow any beautiful creature they see. Atwood is trying to cause the reader to feel the pathos of being rueful towards the females.
Poetic Elements in "Siren Song"
The poem comprises of short lines that make it easy for the reader to focus on each stanza carefully. Atwood employs enjambment in the first three stanzas where most lines and stanzas continue to the next without any punctuation. Enjambment in poetry is used to ensure that an idea extends beyond the limitations of a single line. Enjambment helps to maintain a rhythm stronger than the perpetual end stopping. Here, the reader is pulled along the edges, and a fast rhythm is established in a poem. The poem assumes an intimate, ironic and confessional overall tone. The speaker of this poem looks like she is whispering to the reader enlightening them on the issues that were affecting sailors in the ancient Greek myths. Atwood goes on to coin the poem as a confession, which is only meant to be kept as a secret. She goes on to state that, “I will tell the secret to you,/ to you, only to you./ come closer. This song” (19-21). The speaker has decided to reveal intimate secrets on the condition that the confession will not spread to other people. The tone is used to suggest the speaker’s attitude concerning his or her audience and the subject being addressed. Atwood also tells us her little story using anaphora.
Use of Literary Devices
Anaphora is a rhetorical device that involves the repetition of a sequence of words at the beginning of the neighboring clauses. In this poem, phrases like “the song” (2) and “only you” (23) are repeated to build emphasis, rhythm, cadence in poetry and prose in the poem. The repetition stresses that the reader of the poem, “you” is the person to help the speaker by changing the current situation since he or she is the only person who knows the true feelings and thoughts of the speaker. Another literary device that Atwood uses in this poem is an allusion. The allusion is an expression designed to call an issue to mind without having to mention it explicitly. Majorly, allusion involves a passing comment where the speaker expects the reader to possess enough knowledge to grasp the importance of the indirect reference in a text. The entire Atwood’s poem is an illusion to Greek mythology. A siren is a beautiful bird-like creature who lures sailors to their deaths using her beauty and voice. Here, Atwood uses Greek mythology to address women rights and roles in society. The speaker is portraying the right time to fix this problem bearing in mind that it has been there since the early ages. Margaret Atwood’s “Siren Song” is written in free verse form. Free verse is a literary device that excludes poems from limitations of regular meter or rhythm (LaBlanc 64). These poems fail to follow regular rhyme schemes yet provide an artistic expression. The “Siren Song” has no rhyme or meter whatsoever. Atwood as a Siren has been forced to sing this song to address the current issues and writing in free verse eliminates any element of a song. The free verse also aids the speaker to employ a conversational tone.
Themes Explored in the Poem
In this poem, Atwood has arranged the poem in a way that the reader can pity the bird-like woman who is squatting on the island to lure sailors and kill them. Here Atwood portrays intimacy as a form of trap and verbal promises and pretty songs heard from afar are rarely trusted. These fatal deceptions, lies, and promises can come along with fate, and therefore people should reserve real emotions for real situations. People should also learn to differentiate between illusions that provoke real emotions and the reality (LaBlanc 201). Upon realization that her song is boring, Atwood decides to draw heavily on the recurring motifs and archetypes of literature. This strategy makes the poem maintain its fascination and remain meaningful in a work of art.
Conclusion
“Siren Song” is a poem that makes perfect sense once the reader understands what a Siren is and what they usually do to sailors. Sirens are women in Greek mythology and Atwood uses them to represent women and the femininity they represent. The use of seductive and sexy Sirens also address the sexual roles played by women in literature. In conclusion, “Siren Song” manages to offer some of the stereotypical characteristics often seen in the literature concerning men and women sexual roles.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Siren Song. ProQuest LLC, 2004.
LaBlanc, Michael L., ed. Poetry for Students. Vol. 10. Gale/Cengage Learning, 2000.
