Margaret Atwood Giving Birth Analysis

Margaret Atwood’s “Giving Birth” includes a small set of future parents in a childbearing course. The group consists of numerous first-time moms and dads and only one lady who has given birth before: “She’s there, she says, to make sure they give her a shot this time. They delayed it last time and she went through hell” (830). In response to what she had said, the other people in her class looked at her weird. They are not clamoring for shots; they do not intend to go through hell. Hell comes from the wrong attitude, they feel. The books talk about discomfort” (831).This area of the book kind of reminds me of my own life. When my wife and I were pregnant with our child, my wife and I joined a childbearing course, mainly because this would be our first kid and we both wanted to be involved in this development. Atwood had a little different experience, she had a child before this one and she wanted to make sure that this child delivery would not be as bad as this first one. My wife had not
During her pregnancy, the young lady, Jeanie, is shadowed by another pregnant woman, one “who did not wish to become pregnant, who did not choose to divide herself like this, who did not choose any of these ordeals, these initiations” (830-831). On the way to the hospital to deliver her baby, Jeanie envisions the position of this woman who is certainly on the same path to the same birthing procedure that Jeanie will experience: “It would be no use telling her that everything is going to be fine. The word in English for unwanted intercourse is rape. But there is no word in the language for what is about to happen to this woman” (830). Of course, this woman appears to symbolize a part of Jeanie’s own realization, the part of her and each part of her expected motherhood, which fears her held body and her incapable