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.