Speaker: The poem does not come out directly and state who the speaker is but the person who is narrating the story is using first person and says she is being charged as a witch so you can make the assumption that the person speaking is Mary. Mary is blue eyed and lives alone. She is being charged because she is not the normal girl. She owns her own land.
Occasion: I think the author , Margaret Atwood, was probably interested in the Salem witch trials and Mr. Urban tells use she likes to imagine the perspective of different characters.
Audience: It seems Mary is talking to herself and the reader. Its like she is asking herself why her. Why did people assume she is a witch. The speaker does not use any specific old time phrases to determine the audience so Mary is probably talking to us. Mary speaks of the people who hanged her and of god.
Purpose: The speaker's purpose is to show that people are being wrongfully accused for things that they did not do because of not meeting their sense of normal standard. Also the speaker says she has died twice. Being accused wrongfully can kill some people mentally. Speaker seems to be angry over this. She says she is not grateful for living because since she lived after being hanged people are definitely going to think she is a witch. So living has made her an outcast.
Subject: Being accused wrongfully and dealing with the inter turmoil seems to be the main subject here because that is all the speaker would talk about.
Tone: The author's tone seems informative and a little personal. She is sharing us her feelings of being accused wrongfully. Her mood seems to be angry but not like a wrath kind of anger but a subtle kind. its like she is keeping it in.
You may be right on the speaking to herself asking her "WHY MEEE??!" kind of thing, and i also agree on the mentally dying. Sometimes tragity changes people beyond repaire
ReplyDeleteI would suggest that Soaps isnt the best tool for analysis. While it is a speech of sort, I tend to see it a a layered story of one speaking to one's self while the audience is almost by accident able to witness the words. Knowing that the author herself is an ancestor of the real Mary, adds a second voice to the speaker. We are getting to hear mary as well as mary's ancestor. I see inter turmoil, but I believes it stems from her generous look on her society and those that hanged her. By the ancestors side, they are evil and misguided, but by the social and religious norms of the day, the hanging was a last ditch effort to save Mary's soul. The hanging is an act of cruelty designed to kill or cause suffering in order to let the possessive demon flee, allowing Mary to have a moment of clarity for salvation. I believe that through the eyes of the ancestor, mary is given the ability to recognizer that the crime was committed out of pure desire for salvation. I think Mary sees the injustice, but is balanced by the societal norms and expectations of religious belief for exorcism through pain. She doesnt agree, but accepts her position as a martyr. I believe the Author adds moments of feminism and wants to approach the problem of accepting feminism, but also recognizes that many problems associated with "the feminist" problem tend to represent ignorance and fear more than a direct nature of hate and disrespect. It is a call to make a distinction between those that are malicious and those that are unintentionally cruel.
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