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This is a photograph of me

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This is a photograph of me
Margret Atwood’s poem “This is a photo graph of me” is written in 1st person of someone describing a picture of him or herself drowned in a lake.xnt The poem depicts the narrator loosing a part of him or herself. There appears to be only one character and a narrator. The poem is set in Canada.

Atwood use a passive and cheerful tone. The tone then shifts to a more somber regretful medium in the bracketed stanzas. This mood is to then convey how the picture should be viewed, a nice wooden house amongst “balsam or spruce” around the lake. The tone then shifts to a somber remorseful manner to reflect the situation of a death of a person or part of, not only this the tone shows the remorse and sadness the person has whilst narrating the picture because it is actually of him/her self on a superficial level. The tone changes the mood to in the first half a lighter voice but is the bracketed stanzas the tone prevails the mood into a darker regretful tone.

Atwood uses many multi layer symbols and images in this poem. Atwood starts of examining the finer details of the photograph. “you can see something in the left-hand corner a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree (balsam or spruce). This seemly insignificant part of the photo is actually very symbolic. The oil from a balsam tree is used as religious oil, which is placed on Christian’s head during their last rights. The spruce on the other hand is actually the commonly used Christmas tree, which may represent life or birth. Meaning that the picture entails life and death. Atwood uses very powerful images when she is describing the body in the lake. “On the light is a distortion” , this quote is depicting the impaired view that looking at water at its level gives you. This could be perhaps symbolizing the narrator’s deeper self that is gone or very deep down.

Diction is a prominent feature in this poem. “the day after I drowned “ this is a major tone shift, the word ‘drowned’ is the word the links back to
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