The Poem, Siren Song, by Margaret Atwood The poem “Siren Song” is a poem about one of the three siren sisters of Greek mythology, who has become bored of singing to doomed men. However this siren has cleverly woven her jaded sentiments into the song itself. The poem ‘Siren Song’ is about how men are easily led astray by women even if they can clearly see the consequences of their actions. It is also about how women are looking for someone who can see past their beauty, or in this case their voice. Unfortunately for this siren every man whom she has lured has been the same, which portrays men to be all the same.
Atwood begins her poem with the speaker mysteriously introducing a secret. By writing the "Siren Song" in first person, the reader is shown how the Sirens feel about their song. They know how much people desire to hear their song and they taunt the reader by hinting that they will tell the secret if the reader gets "me out of this bird suit". The song is just a "cry for help" that the birds find "boring", which, if it was written from any other point of view, would not be known about as it is "the song nobody knows". In Homer's Odyssey, the Sirens are mythical creatures whose enchanting voices lure sailors to their deaths.
The key word in this quote is “thrilling”. Certainly any man can be transfixed by a “thrilling” seductive female. Imagine several “thrilling” seductive female voices, and what we know of the weak nature of man. I believe that Homer uses these beings to convey that man is completely spellbound, trapped, and facing danger when he gives in to the seductive nature of women. Odysseus wants to hear these songs of the Sirens, and he instructs his crew to tie him to the ship, to block sound from their ears with beeswax, and to tie him tighter if he pleads to be let loose.
It is said the beautiful Sirens use their enchanting voices to lure sailors and make them die. Their beautiful singing will make men forget directions and shipwreck on the rocky coast. Sirens can be found in many Greek stories, especially in Homer's “Odyssey”: “But the sirens charm with their pure song, sitting in their meadow; the shore is full of bones of rotting men, with the skin shrinking around them (Odyssey. I2. 44-46)” Every man who hears Sirens’ singing will have to die, so it is hard to know what Sirens sing from those dead men.
“Leda and the Swan” alludes to the mythological story of Leda, Helen’s mother, who is raped by Zeus in the form of a great swan. The “Swan” is a symbol of mystery and passion in throughout the poem. Yeats uses startling imagery and language surrounding sexual tension in the first stanza to indicate his need to explore in order to satisfy. The imagery and language in the octave support Leda’s struggle with the rape, “great wings,” “beating still,” “dark webs” and “nape caught” represent the her resistance through the use of stressed syllables. The last line of the first stanza, “He holds her helpless breast upon his breast,” uses alliteration repeating the “h” sound making the line difficult to read much like the difficulty Leda is facing in her struggle with the rape.
Female are always integrated as pathetic victim of men for revenge, self indulgence and entertainment since ancient times. Zeus molester and made Leda his sexual victim. Yeats used the words like “staggering girl,” “her helpless breast” and “her loosening thighs” to reflect how pathetic Leda was? Leda was cemented in the circumstances where she was the lady abducted by the god (swan), yet she was unexpected to do that. In Yeats said“her nape caught in his bill,” reflects the situation that leda was forced to get sexually intimate by the swan.
Bradstreet also shows identity for the Puritan men that criticize her work because men had more talent and skill, which come in handy in the society, but she sees that it’s unfair. For the men in her community she talks in stanza five, denying her writings, claiming Bradstreet’s works are “stolen”, or else it was by chance”. She writes in her poem in stanza seven, “Men have precedence and still excel, it is but vain unjustly to wage war,” in the beginning of the poem, stanza two, “Fool I grudge the Muses did not part, ‘Twixt him and me that over fluent store". These lines show that Bradstreet felt that it was not fair because men and women had different roles. Ruiz 2 During the time women had to stay home and take care of the house hold things, meanwhile men did the labor, which Bradstreet wants men and women to have the same rights.
This character is not afraid to show his emotions, especially in a society where a man portraying his emotions might be viewed as a sign of weakness. The scene which Grendel sneaks in at night and kills many of Hrothgar’s warriors; in the morning he says “Knowing by its tracks that some demon had torn his followers apart. He wept, fearing the beginning might not be the end.”(40). Most people can relate to these feelings of hopelessness and despair displayed in this scene. Some may see Hrothgar as a coward; he really cares deeply for the welfare of his people, a quality that is admired by many.
Towards the beginning of the play A Mid Summer Nights Dream Lysander states that ‘the course of true love never did run smooth.’ Throughout the play along with the love song ‘Wild Horses’ by U2 we learn that love does not always make sense, that love is about emotions rather than rules and that love can cause us to both laugh and cry. Both the play and song use sophisticated language techniques that helps the audience understand certain emotions and believe certain truths about love. Love is about emotions rather than rules therefore can be unpredictable and can be chaotic. This is shown through the characterisation of Hermia. Hermia is in love with Lysander despite the Athenian rules.
If Hamlet were to have seen his father’s ghost by himself, there would be a greater argument for him being insane from the outset of the play. Hamlet also exerts control over his actions, which is the main reason why it could be argued that he is sane. He actively tries to convince Polonius that he has gone mad - mocking him when he would usually be respectful, acting cruelly towards Ophelia whom he was clearly affectionate to earlier in the play. He does this in the hope that Polonius will tell the court of his madness. Hamlet is often hesitant to do things, for example where he had the chance to kill Claudius in the chapel but couldn’t bring himself to do it, not because he would be killing another human but because he wanted Claudius to suffer and not go straight to Heaven.