In her poem “Driving into the Wreak,” Adrienne Rich uses a lot of passionate imagery to describe a lonely character’s adventure under the sea. The words and phrases she choses to use are so descriptive and compelling that it makes the reader feel as if he or she is taking the dive themselves. In this poem, the third stanza really stood out to me and it goes, “I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My fliippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin.” I like Rich’s choice of diction when she says “immerse” because the word is generally used when describing things that are submerged in liquid. The word in this line makes it feel as if the diver is swimming in air. Now the lines following, “the blue light the clear atoms of our human air,” brings a sense of comfort and familiarity of the human world. This is a stark contrast to the when the diver is about to go under water where it says, “I go down. My flippers crippled me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder.” The phrases “cripple me” and “crawl like an insect” really emphasizes the awkwardness of moving from land to sea. It is evident that the diver naturally is not comfortable in the ocean world as he or she is in the human world.

Having read “A Room of Ones Own” it is clear that Virginia Woolf was a great inspiration to Rich. It seems to me that a lot of Woolf’s anger towards sexual difference in power influenced Rich’s perspective on the issue and manifested her own sense of anger. In “A Room of Ones Own,” Woolf says, “but it is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex; naturally, this is so. Yet it is the masculine values that prevail.” The ideas of gender roles and women’s inferiority are reoccurring themes throughout Rich’s poems. Take “From and Old House in America” for example. This is a story about a man and wife and their struggles during the western movement in the early 19^th century. In the last two lines of part 5 it says, “or between man and woman in this savagely fathered and unmothered world.” What this is referring to are the sins of men for driving their masculinity and the sins of women for being passive to this force.

The best way I can describe Rich’s poetic style is super organized. “Driving into the Wreak” is neatly broken into stanza that are between 8-18 lines long; “Cartographies of Silence” and “From an Old House in America” are written in lines of pairs; and “Twenty One Love Poem” are actually twenty one difference love poems from I-XXI. Reflecting on “From an Old House in America,” I think Rich wrote this poem in lines of pairs to symbolize the equality that should be between a man and woman. Another neat thing that Rich does in “Driving into the Wreak” is that she uses a colon in line “I am she: I am he.” I believe she uses this punctuation to illustrate that there isn’t a definitive separation between man and woman but rather a balanced coexistence between the two sexes.

I would hardly count “Twenty One Love Poems” as actual love poems; they’re more like sad poem if you ask me. Instead of there being descriptions of passion, infatuation, and yearning these poems are filled with loneliness, helplessness, and violence. The first three lines really surprised me as it states, “Wherever in this city, screens flicker with pornography, with science-fiction vampires, victimized hirelings bending to the lash.” I couldn’t help but wonder how does “pornography” and “science-fiction vampires” relate to love? I suppose Twilight might be able to answer that one…

A major shift in personas occurs in Rich’s “Driving into the Wreak,” where it says, “This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body We circle silently about the wreak we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he.” It is quite confusing to understand but it seems to me that the diver has somehow become a mermaid slash merman during his/her time underwater. If you notice, the diver starts describing himself not as “I” but as “we”. Going back to the idea of gender equality, the diver is a representation of how man and woman are one.

“The Narrative of the Life” by Frederick Douglas is a great story told my Frederick Douglas himself about the life he endured as an African American slave during the eighteen hundreds. The story is told in a first person point of view, giving readers a unique insight to the thoughts and feelings of slaves, which is rare considering that many African Americans were not literate during this time. The point of this narration is to show readers something other than the common tales of the victors but rather the cold hard truth of the victims.

From the very beginning of the story, Douglas discusses his weak understanding of his family’s past that contributes to the insecurities he carries concerning his identity. He explains, “I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of those times was very short in duration, and at night” (Douglas 237). As for Douglas’s father, he is mentioned as nothing more than a whispered rumor that claims he was a slaveholder. Despite the hardships Douglas encounters, his tone of voice is always one that is calm and hopeful but also rational. He writes in this manner because he is able to comprehend the outrageousness of the slave system but chooses to fight it with intellectual elegance rather than with futile anger. Having done so, “The Narrative of the Life” has become a great work of literature that is studied to this day even with the years of slavery behind us.

Throughout “The Narrative of the Life,” there is not a single page that does not mention some sort of horrifyingly barbaric punishment laid upon slaves by their masters. Even Douglas’s earliest memory is watching his bounded aunt getting whipped to pieces and hearing her blood curdling screams as each lash strikes her back. I believe that it is this very memory along with his own beatings that aspired him to be more than just a slave, a piece of property that could be handled in any which way a master desires. Once Henry and John (slaves of Mr. Freeland) taught Douglas how to read, he knew that literacy was his escape. Instead of participating in degrading activities such as drinking and boxing during the Sabbath day, Douglas took the time to teach other slaves how to read. On page 273 of the book, Douglas says, “I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul to be doing something that looked like bettering the condition of my race” (273). I believe that it was through literacy and his ability to teach others that enabled Douglas to overcome his ambiguous origin and status as a slave. Literature had shown him he was destined to be much, much more.