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Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich

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In the poem “Diving into the Wreck”, Adrienne Rich describes a dive into the ocean, from the boat, then to a ship wreck. During the beginning of the poem, she mentions that she is not diving into the wreck with a team of people, but she is doing it alone. Then she mentions the ladder, which is a literal passage way from the boat, into the ocean. She explains that “The ladder is always there/hanging innocently/close to the side of the schooner./We know what it is for,/we who have used it” (13-18). The ladder on the boat is a metaphor for a passage way into the wreck, it is what she needs to start her journey. She repeats “we” to show that yes she is alone, but not really alone, because people have taken this dive before. People have attempted to record the dive into the wreck, and they’ve all done it alone. This is why she must take the journey alone, without a team.

Diving into the wreck is a symbol of going into the past. Rich is attempting to change the future of women, but in order to do that, she must first “see the damage that was done” (55). The wreck itself is the history of women during male dominated times. This history, where the damage occurred, is the key to the answer of why the myths of gender roles exist today. Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” is also in a sense a dive into the wreck. She was one of the people to journey into the wreck, and is why Rich is not completely alone. Similarly to how Rich was journeying into the past to discover why certain myths exist today, Woolf was also going into the past, attempting to deconstruct why there still existed this gender consciousness, which inhibited both men and women to write to the best of their ability.

The voice of Rich shifts between “I”, which was prevalent in the beginning and middle of the text, to “we”, being used toward the end. When Rich makes it to the wreck she states: “I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair/streams black, the merman in his armored body./We circle silently” (61-64). Rich did not meet another male, nor is she both male and female. With switching to “we” instead of “I”, she is conveying that she is not thinking like women nor a man, but she is thinking like both, mixed together. This notion of being both male and female, or thinking objectively, can be traced back to the ideas and desires of Woolf for men and women in literature to come together in unity. Because in the wreckage, or within history, you can find man’s attempt to exert their superiority, and women’s sense of inferiority. The inhibitions in both sexes is the book of myths. It is what hinders society progression in both writing, and in general life.

Notes From Underground – Part II

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Part I of Notes From Underground shows us a character that is contradictory, depressed, overly conscience, and in a way, bipolar in his thoughts. The reader slowly acquires an annoyance toward the Underground Man. You are never sure if he’s revealing his true thoughts, if he’s lying, or if he even has true thoughts. Part II of the story highlights how the Underground Man came to be, and how society can shape and form the ideals of a person.

At the start of Part II, you learn the Underground Man has a passion for reading, and for Russian Romanticism. But there was also an abnormal part to him. He was extremely anti-social, depressed, and he always had a belief that people, like his co-workers, had a negative view toward him. For instance, he saw himself as a visually ugly person, “therefore, every time [he] arrived at work, [he] took pains to behave as independently as possible, so that [he] couldn’t be suspected of any malice…”(658). Why does he have this idea that people innately view him as ugly, or with “a kind of loathing”? We learn that as a child he was an orphan. He was alone and alienated at school because of his status as an orphan. He clearly had no parents so there was not one person to show him any sort of love or proper human interaction. His belief that people will always see him as insufficient stems from his childhood and the way people treated him.

As an adult, people still treat him horrible. He wanted to be accepted by Simonov and his friends, so he decided to go to a farwell dinner. First they teased and laughed at him, Ferfichkin threatened to hit him, then they acted as if he did not exist. Even with that, the Underground Man asked desperately for forgiveness, he craved so much for some sort of human attention, so much to be accepted. But it was all done in vain. He soon realizes that as a child he was inadequate, and as an adult he will remain inadequate.

The prostitute Liza is the Underground Man’s last chance at having a real relationship with someone, she was his last chance at finally being accepted. After being mocked by the Underground Man countless of times, she realizes that his personality is a result of his unhappiness. She realizes this and “suddenly she threw herself at [him], put her arms around his neck, and burst into tears” (705). She hugged him, and he cried his sorrows away. The Underground Man then explains the source of his unhappiness: “They won’t let me… I can’t be… good!”(705). The many times he attempted to have a normal life, to be good, he was rejected, and mocked. But his lack of faith in humanity, derived from past experiences, misconstrued his feelings; he mocked her again, this time being his last time. His anti-social behavior, his depression, the way he believes that everyone loathes him, his over thinking; all of it can now be explained by society’s terrible treatment toward him. This was the last story told to his audience, this is when he officially became the Underground Man.