Orpheus (1)

By Margaret Atwood

You walked in front of me,

pulling me back out

to the green light* that had once

grown fangs** and killed me***.

*Comment: Green light refers to The Great Gatsby

**Comment: Personification

***Comment: She does not want to return

I was obedient*, but

numb, like an arm

gone to sleep; the return

to time was not my choice**.

*Comment: She was only doing what she was told. Did not have any feeling in her actions.

**Comment: If it were her choice she would not have wanted to go back.

By then I was used to silence.

Though something stretched between us

like a whisper*, like a rope:

my former name**,

drawn tight.

You had your old leash

with you, love*** you might call it,

and your flesh voice.

*Comment: The whisper shows that the rope was barely noticeable. It was almost non-existent. From the outside this can seem like domestic violence cases where you cannot see it well on the outside.

**Comment: the “former name” and the “old leash” refer to her past and how she does not want to return to her past

***Comment: By saying that Orpheus considers his “old leash” as “love”, Atwood is depicting how the relationship between Orpheus and Eurydice has changed.

Before your eyes you held steady

the image of what you wanted*

me to become: living again.

It was this hope of yours that kept me following**.

*Comment: refers to Orpheus and his desires. Changed focus.

**Comment: She was following him because of what he wants. He thinks that what he is doing is very loving but she only sees it as her obligation and has no desire to return.

I was your hallucination, listening

and floral, and you were singing me:

already new skin was forming on me*

within the luminous misty shroud

of my other body; already

there was dirt on my hands and I was thirsty**.

*Comment: She makes the idea of new skin forming have a negative tone as if she was getting trapped.

**Comment: the dirt on her hands and the fact that she was thirsty shows the negatives of the human world rather than the many positive that exist. This exemplifies that she does not want to return.

I could see only the outline

of your head and shoulders,

black against the cave mouth*,

and so could not see your face

at all, when you turned

*Comment: Orpheus is seen as a silhouette. This shows her negative impression of what he is doing. He is also leading which shows the male dominance. The fact that he is black against the cave mouth shows that he darker than what is normally considered very dark. This indicates that being with him is the worse of the two evils and that she would rather stay in the cave.

and called to me because you had

already lost me*. The last

I saw of you was a dark oval**.

Though I knew how this failure

would hurt you, I had to

fold like a gray moth*** and let go.

*Comment: already had lost me indicates that something had changed and there was no way of coming back. This is what women think after the first case of male dominance in a relationship.

**Comment: Both Orpheus and Eurydice are seen as dark/ gray. This indicates how the relationship has changed. Orpheus seen as an oval indicates that he has this delusional idea of eternity because he wants to bring Eurydice back.

***Comment: Eurydice as the gray moth shows that she wants to fly away and is vulnerable.

You could not believe I was more than your echo*.

*Comment: This hits on the idea that she was never really there and only a shadow. This reflects how she feels in the case of male dominance over her voice. An echo only comes after the original voice and repeats exactly what the original voice says. The stance Atwood takes is that in today’s society, male dominance has made the female voice seem less significant and that there is a force trying to make females repeat what the male has said.