The Short Poem “siren Song”
Essay Preview: The Short Poem “siren Song”
Report this essay
The short poem “Siren Song” by Margret Atwood has nine lines and three stanzas. This short poem does not have any type of rhyming scheme. Poems that do not have rhyming schemes are considered to be a free verse poem. The Siren song relates to Greek mythology. In Greek culture the sirens were scary creatures that looked like women. They sang songs that were enchanting and brought sailors who were near to them. The narrator of the poem is female siren, she tells the readers on the different people that she brought by singing her songs. “The song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons even though they see the beached skulls”. These two lines in the poem represent that the songs where very persuading because the sailors seen the skulls on the females but that did not matter because of the beauty of the music.
The theme in the siren song is the easiness of how women can seduce men with invitation. In the poem the women began to cry so the men can save them from an island in which they were put on. The men were supposed to get the women off. In reality they do not care about being saved the like the island they just like messing with the minds of the men. After the men are lured they kill them. “The song nobody knows because anyone who had heard it is dead and the others cant remember.” This resembles that the sirens are very good at luring men to them and killing them without anyone knowing that they were killed. There were many literary devices that where presented in the poem.
The one that stood out the most would be Allusions. An Allusion is an expression which presents something but does not say the expression directly. The Allusion in the poem is the creatures or females that are being presented all through the short poem. The female sirens are ugly creatures that have a body of a birdy and a head of a female. As it was stated earlier the enchanting music lured the men on the island. Margret Atwood throughout the poem presents women in a bad way. She does this by saying showing men will do anything to get with a woman. By the woman singing it allowed for hypnosis, men were so hypnotized by the music that they did not realize that the women was just playing the man and was never showing any sort of affection. The body of the bird resembles the freedom. The freedom is shown in a bird because it can always fly away and in the poem if the women hated the island a lot they could have just left but instead they stood to mess with the sailors.
Another literary device that was used in the poem was repetition. “I will tell the secret to you, to you, only to you. Come closer. This song is a cry for help: Help me! Only you, only you can”. The key words in the repetition is only and you. These words are very strong in the fact the men can easily believe that they are the one for the women saying these words. It is showing that women no matter what they do are acceptable to men and have much more power in persuasion. The persuasion and luring occurs because this phrase makes the men feel wanted and special. There is also imagery in the poem. The first