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Analysis Of Margaret Atwood's Footnote To The Amnesty Report On Torture

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Analysis Of Margaret Atwood's Footnote To The Amnesty Report On Torture
The effects of distressing and upsetting situations are evident in everybody’s lives. Whether personal experiences or stories heard on the news, everybody holds some level of grief that has made them somewhat numb to similar horrors. These events have also shaped how we view the world. In Margaret Atwood’s poem “Footnote to the Amnesty Report on Torture”, a janitor is tasked with cleaning a torture chamber. This poem presents the theme of how becoming traumatized and desensitized to the horrific actions of others can destroy a person’s sense of reality. First, Atwood describes the chamber, she says “The torture chamber is not like anything you would have expected”(1-2), there are no “sexy chains and leather goods”(3-4) nor anything like “a
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