Purpose and Nature in Atwood’s Poetry

Better known as a novelist (the Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye), Margaret Atwood is also a poet, and this essay takes a look at her use of nature in her writing.

The poem referenced (Rat Song) can be found at
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=21984

(Essay has not been looked at since that sleepless night during which I typed it. Fair warning.)


"That distinction between "suffering" and "paying a price" was a crucial one for [Margaret] Atwood. … The latter is much closer to Atwood's belief that an artist is a responsible citizen and not a passive victim" (Cooke, 17). Atwood lives by the code that a writer has an obligation to give back to the community. As a poet and novelist, Atwood is a member of organizations such as the Writer's Union of Canada, PEN, and Amnesty International. Her writing can be read as confessional poetry, yet its purpose is not catharsis – Atwood writes to reach the reader and confront societal issues and ills. Despite her childhood, Atwood is anything but an isolated and introspection-bound poet. She deals with life and attempts to offer the reader answers to life’s questions, and if that proves impossible, to show compassion to suffering and a glimmer of hope. Though the poem Rat Song (190) may, on the surface, read as the persona’s attack or the venting of frustrations, the poem reveals both Atwood’s position on feminism and offers a tentative solution to the issue of gender-based conflict.

Margaret Atwood’s father, Carl Atwood, worked as a government forest entomologist and his research took him and his family over Canada and into the Candian wilderness for months at a time. Growing up in such a manner, Atwood did not attend a full year of school until grade 8. "This," she told Joyce Carol Oates in an interview, "was a definite advantage" (Cooke 22). Atwood did not see her travelling lifestyle as a hindrance to her life or as a culprit for her isolation from relationships. Instead she embraced it and allowed it to fuel her life and works. Her relationship with nature is far from antagonistic and Atwood's poetry echoes the shifting and fluid nature of her early life. Shannon Hengen explores “Atwood's environmental ethics and the evolution of her ideas about what "being human" means,” arguing that Atwood’s poetry reveals a “symbiotic relation between human and non-human nature." (Howells, 4) These influences are readily apparent in the poem Rat Song, as Atwood links a female protagonist to a rat and uses it to represent the generic victimized woman. The decision to use an animal, especially a rat - a creature that is decidedly negative in its associations in western culture – demonstrates the duality and use of contrast that is common in Atwood’s poetry. The poem plays with the image of rats as vicious and filthy animals that “live off your / leavings, gristle and rancid fat,” (Atwood, line 16-17). However, as pets, rats tend to be tame, intelligent, and clean.

On the surface level of interpretation, when the man hears the voice of the rat singing, the man takes out his gun and tries to kill the rat. The implied conflict has the woman trying to be heard, and the man attempting to silence her. When the man tries to trap the rat, the rat outsmarts him. Thus the man comes to believe that the rat is dangerous. The underlying message is that the man is threatened by the intelligent woman. The duality of the poem underscore Atwood’s tendency to create a world “located in a territory that is both the phenomenal world of ordinary experience and a mythological landscape of the imagination." (Howell, 130) Furthermore, the fact that the man cannot control the rat reveals his “attempt of colonizing…to impose order,” until finally “that order breaks down and is disavowed” (Howell, 132-133). No matter what the man does, the natural intelligence and survival instinct of the rat daunts all attempts to destroy or suppress her. The insistence on the temporary nature of all human controls and constraints reflects both Atwood’s mobile childhood in the backwoods of Northern Quebec and her feminist message of survival against hard odds via perseverance.

The sarcastic elements in the Rat Song, such as the line “Right, I’m a parasite,” (Atwood, line 16) characterize her earlier poetry in which the language is ironical and precise, and the messages tend to be emotionally distant. Atwood’s later poetry shifts towards using different voices for different poems and a more compassionate, elegiac tone. (Cooke, 4-5) The Rat Song has elements of both phases of the writer’s life, with the sharp wit and the longing, reaching of the ending. The conceit of the poem is also underscored by the manner in which the poem’s ending repeats itself, albeit from a different angle as it speaks of “singing” in the first and last lines.

The "all I want is love, you stupid / humanist." (Atwood, line 14-15) is crucial to understanding the message of the poem. The rat does not want to bother the man or live off of the man; all it wants is some love. The poem seeks to tell the male audience that women simply desire respect, yet the actions of the man in the poem cause the rat-woman to lash out both in action and verbal abuse. The rat lives off the man not because it wishes to live that way, but because it is the only option open to the rat-woman.

"He is hiding / between your syllables" further develops the relationship between the man and the rat-woman. The single line divided by a slash implies that a good man exists there within the negative man - the rat-man that sings along side with the rat-woman. This not only reflects Atwood’s feminist stance, but offers hope and understanding. The poem plays on a common theme that appears in Margaret Atwood’s poetry, the "theme of nature's very slow but very certain power to self-renew" (Howell, 77) and the woman is shown to be very much part of nature.

Though Atwood’s poetry deals with suffering in the Guardian, she was quoted to say that "women see me as living proof that you don't have to come to a sticky end - put your head in an oven, stay silent for 30 years, not have children - to be a good and serious writer" (Viner). Her poetry deals with many issues both gender-specific and societal, and the poem Rat Song comprises both of Atwood’s political views on feminist, her long-held appreciation for the human-nature dichotomy, and most importantly, of her aim to reach the reader.

Bibliography:

*Atwood, Margaret “Rat Song” from Selected Poems 1965-1975. 1974, 1976 Houghton Mifflin Company. P 190
*Cooke, Nathalie. Margaret Atwood; a Biography. 1. Toronto, Ontario: ECW PRESS, 1998.
*"Fancy rat." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 11 Nov 2007, 03:36 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 20 Nov 2007.
*Howells, Coral Ann. The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
*Viner, Katherine. "Interview: Margaret Atwood, Double Bluff." Guardian Unlimited 16 Sep 2000 20 Nov 2007.
*"Fancy rat." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 11 Nov 2007, 03:36 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 20 Nov 2007.