You Are Happy

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You Are Happy: But She is Not Happy Margaret Atwood’s poem, “You Are Happy”, tells a story about something everyone goes through in life, break ups. No matter how “smoothly” people think they may go, someone always gets hurt. Like Atwood, some is hurt and become angrier than others become. The easiest way to explicate Atwood’s poem was line by line because each line is a completely new feeling or emotion. The first stanza: “The water turns a long way down over the raw stone, ice crusts around it… (Hall, D ,1992)”. The water is turning faster and faster pulling her exposed cold heart and soul further down so she can’t heal. This stanza engraves an unforgettable image in the readers mind. People can picture a women struggling to get out of her quick sand like life; as she falls, one failure right after another. The second stanza: “…We walked separately along the hill to the open beach, unused picnic tables, wind shoving the brown waves, erosions, gravel rasping on gravel…(Hall, D ,1992)”. This part takes a more calming effect than before. We, as in her and her loved one, walked separately, means they are growing apart and their relationship is done and over. Why would a beach have unused picnic tables and brown waves. The only logical conclusion would be that it is winter because no one goes to a beach in the winter. The depressing and colorless beach represents her current life, it is like the open beach displays her life to everyone and lets them mock her failure of her relationship. Her depressing life doesn’t let her have a chance to break free, she is always struggling to breathe. Her heart is broken and there is too much pain for her to heal. The third stanza: “…In the ditch a deer carcass, no head. Bird running across the glaring road against the low pink sun…(Hall, D ,1992)”. Usually when a deer is without their head means one thing; someone took their

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