So I am about to read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and spotted this poem in my collection: The Moment, by Margaret Atwood. It has a nice message to it and so I thought I'd make it this week's post.
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
The first stanza is purposely misleading; Atwood wants the reader to think the 'you' directly addressed has achieved great things and deserves to call something their 'own'. The ascending list in line four implies that any ownership is encompassed in this poem. However, the caesura created by the temporal clause that is the first stanza separates the human assumption with the natural consequence. The fact that the thought has been merely introduced is highlighted by the decapitalisation of 'is'.
The second stanza personifies nature in an emotive way. The adjective 'soft' conveys a lack of comfort and safety. The verb phrase 'take back' uses monosyllabic words to connote a swift withdrawal after an insult. The repetition of plosives aids this. The noun 'language' implies a loss of knowledge but also of companionship. Then the beauty of the country is gone with the cliffs crumbling beneath your pride. Even something as light as the air retracts itself. Again polysyllabic words in line twelve slow the line down to mimic short gasping breaths - your final ones. Atwood is saying that humans cannot live without nature and without respecting it. The caesura this time is greater as a full stop is used; it feels like the end of the poem comes with the end of this stanza.
Stanza three contains many negatives ('no', 'nothing', 'never' x2). 'No' at first is probably taken as negation but I find you can also read it as if 'they' are feeling a loss and so use it exclamatively, rather like in the movies when someone falls off a cliff (Lord of the Rings much). This negative approach creates an ominous tone, prolonged by the use of the past tense in 'you were a visitor', one who is no longer welcome, or perhaps one who no longer exists. The reference to 'time' connotes that nature has long existed, and quite happily, without human presence because humans are not necessary to any life. The poem ends nicely on the antithetic 'always' which comes as a positive after its opposite 'never'.
Somehow I feel this is a parody of the fall in the garden of Eden. Maybe because 'they' seem rather unforgiving and give no sign of letting things return to how they were; 'the final stanza is mainly past tense and not one part of the poem looks towards a future state. The temptation is to prosper and lay claim to things and once you do you can never co exist again.
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
The first stanza is purposely misleading; Atwood wants the reader to think the 'you' directly addressed has achieved great things and deserves to call something their 'own'. The ascending list in line four implies that any ownership is encompassed in this poem. However, the caesura created by the temporal clause that is the first stanza separates the human assumption with the natural consequence. The fact that the thought has been merely introduced is highlighted by the decapitalisation of 'is'.
The second stanza personifies nature in an emotive way. The adjective 'soft' conveys a lack of comfort and safety. The verb phrase 'take back' uses monosyllabic words to connote a swift withdrawal after an insult. The repetition of plosives aids this. The noun 'language' implies a loss of knowledge but also of companionship. Then the beauty of the country is gone with the cliffs crumbling beneath your pride. Even something as light as the air retracts itself. Again polysyllabic words in line twelve slow the line down to mimic short gasping breaths - your final ones. Atwood is saying that humans cannot live without nature and without respecting it. The caesura this time is greater as a full stop is used; it feels like the end of the poem comes with the end of this stanza.
Stanza three contains many negatives ('no', 'nothing', 'never' x2). 'No' at first is probably taken as negation but I find you can also read it as if 'they' are feeling a loss and so use it exclamatively, rather like in the movies when someone falls off a cliff (Lord of the Rings much). This negative approach creates an ominous tone, prolonged by the use of the past tense in 'you were a visitor', one who is no longer welcome, or perhaps one who no longer exists. The reference to 'time' connotes that nature has long existed, and quite happily, without human presence because humans are not necessary to any life. The poem ends nicely on the antithetic 'always' which comes as a positive after its opposite 'never'.
Somehow I feel this is a parody of the fall in the garden of Eden. Maybe because 'they' seem rather unforgiving and give no sign of letting things return to how they were; 'the final stanza is mainly past tense and not one part of the poem looks towards a future state. The temptation is to prosper and lay claim to things and once you do you can never co exist again.
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