This is the Photograph of Me by Margaret Atwood- Essay

 

This is the Photograph of Me

-        Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood’s poem “This is the Photograph of Me” was first published in her poetry collection The Circle Game (1964). It explains and immortalizes female perspective under the male dominated societies. It also voices the experiences of those who feel shut out of their own histories. Themes like Feminism, distortion of reality, and the erasure of marginalized histories are also discussed in this poem.

The speaker of the poem begins to describe an old photograph from many years ago. The speaker says that the photograph is “smeared” or “smudged” and “ blurry”. Then she instructs the reader through a more detailed analysis of the photograph first pointing out a tree that creeps into the frame from one of its left corners. Then the speaker identifies “a small frame house” that sits on a slope as well as “a lake” and “some low hills”. Thus in the first part of the poem the poet describes a natural scenic landscape.

 The speaker admits in a parenthetical statement that the photograph was taken the day after she has drowned in the lake. The speaker makes the reader to look more closely and try to identify the corpse submerged within the lake. Finally, the speaker tells the audience that they have been gazing the photo for a while so that they can identify the speaker. Through this, the speaker uncovers that understanding of the fact or truth is always concerned with subjectivity.

In the first part of the poem, the speaker uses the soft language to portray the scene such as “gentle slope”, “small frame house” and “low hills”. Here, the scene looks so calm and quiet. Suddenly this gentle description disappears, when it is revealed that the photograph was taken on the day after the speaker died. This shows that the speaker’s experience has been hidden in the lake like her body.

The speaker also calls the reflection of sunlight on lake “a distortion”. It suggests that the photograph misrepresents the scene. The word “distortion” conveys that the speaker is unsure of “how large or how small I am”. The parenthesis in the poem reveals that the speaker’s perspective is entirely neglected by the society. Thus “This is the Photograph of Me”, makes an appeal to the readers to pay attention to female perspective and give them their due space.

Father Returning Home by Dilip Chitre- Essay

 

Father Returning Home

-         Dilip Chitre

Dilip Purushottam Chitre was an important Indian writer, critic, painter and a filmmaker. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award in1994 for his Marathi book of poems Ekun Kavita. His poem “Father Returning Home” was first published in his collection  Traveling in a Cage (1980). This autobiographical poem talks about the poet’s father in a city where his own sons and daughters treat him as an alien. This poem deals with many themes like alienation in the twilight years, indifference of children, rootlessness, generation gap, and the future of the individuals in the city.

The first stanza of the poem describes the train journey of the poet’s father while returning home one evening. The father stands among ‘silent commuters’ in the yellow light of a local compartment. He does not see the suburbs that pass by since they are too familiar to him. As he travels during the rainy season, his clothes become damp and dirty. His black raincoat is stained with mud. His bag crumbles with the heavy load of the books. Due to old age, his eyesight has become poor.

The poet conveys the pathetic condition of his father in the society and family through the following lines:

“Now I can see him getting off the train

Like a word dropped from a long sentence”

The poet says that he can see his father getting down the train ‘like a word dropped from a long sentence.’ The sentence provides an image of an old man who gets down from the train as if he is no longer relevant to it like a deleted word from a sentence.

The poet then sees his father hurrying through the long, grey platform. He seems to be as old as the platform. He crosses the railway tracks and hurries home through muddy lanes on a rainy day. This is indicated by his chappals which are sticky with mud. This stanza portrays the monotonousness of the old man.

The alienation of the poet’s father in his own house is explained further. The ole man drinks a weak tea and eats a stale chapatti when he comes back home. This shows that the even his basic requirements are not properly carried out by his family. A sense of pity for the poet’s father arises in when the poet says:

“His sullen children have often refused to share

Jokes and secrets with him.”

Next, the father goes into a contemplative mood after reading a book. He goes to the toilet and contemplates “Man's estrangement from a man-made world”. This conveys that the old man is visibly upset. When he comes out of the toilet, he trembles. It seems that he trembles not only by the cold water but also due to the thoughts that came into his mind.

The father finds himself all alone in his room. The children do not interact with their father. They do not share their joys or sorrows with him. To compensate their company, he listens to the radio. Then he goes to sleep. In his sleep, he dreams about his ancestors and grandchildren. It seems that he is trying to communicate with his ancestors who had entered the subcontinent through the Khyber Pass in the Himalayas. It is a kind of relief to him from his mundane life devoid of any human contact. Thus the poem portrays the alienation of the poet’s father who is completely ignored by his kith and kin.