Fall of Man Depicted in Atwoods Backdrop Addresses Cowboy Essay

Fall of Man Depicted in Atwoods  backcloth Addresses cowpuncher   The sexual politics of the public-woman relationship, or more specifically the sexual exploitation of women by men, is a clear concern in Margaret Atwoods Backdrop Addresses Cowboy. Although the oppressor-as-male theme is by no means an original source of poetic inspiration, Atwoods distinction is that she views the destructive man-woman relationship as a metaphor for, symptom and symbol of, bigger things. From the vantage-point of fair(prenominal) consciousness, Margaret Atwood empahsizes the backdrop as being not only the woman, but also the land and the spiritual life of the universe the cowherd is both a man bent on personal gain (possibly an American based on Atwoods strong anti-American sentiments in her novel, Surfacing) and an emissary of proficient progress. The structure of the poem logically supports the theme of conflict and imperialism in that it is clearly divided into two sections or camps. The first four stanzas offer a description of you, the righteous and heroic cowboy who brutalizes life without creating new life. The perspective shifts then from predator to prey in the final five stanzas as I, throwed as victimized woman and victimised nature, addresses her antagonist. The t superstar or mood of Backdrop Addresses Cowboy also undergoes a change after the first four stanzas when the reader enters the tragic, joyless experience of one who is paying the price of slaughter and desecration. At this point in the poem, it seems futile to consider whether or not the price should be paid and the metaphoric man-woman accent remains distrubingly unresolved. In terms of form, Backdrop Addresses Cowboy is written in open (org... ...esecrate, the emphatically placed word of the climactic line in Backdrop Addresses Cowboy, emphasizes again the backdrop as being not only the woman, but also the land and the spiritual life of the universe. As an emissary of technological progress, man has committed a sacreligious act against nature and humanity and his fall embodies the fall of the spiritual, the historical and the rational. In Margaret Atwoods poem, then, the troubled man-woman relationship is symptom and symbol of a greater alienation within humanity. Mans past and present curelties to human, natural and spiritual life are expressesed metaphoricall in terms of a cowboy winning the tungsten on a movie set, against a backdrop supporting his heroism. Backdrop Addresses Cowboy offers a vision that is both desolate and conscious-expanding but it does not present answers.