Blog #4_Topic #2_Mingyu Zhang

In Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck”, the poet depicts how a person dives into the deep ocean alone to explore the wreck from the past. There are many metaphors in this poem, and the wreck is one of the conceits among those metaphors. Throughout the poem, the wreck appears several times, and it is the driving force for the narrator to go down there. I want to argue that the wreck stands for the mistreatment of women and deprivation of human rights in general in the past.

When Rich wrote “Diving into the Wreck” by the year of 1973, American society was going through unprecedented civil movements and the liberation of women from domestic labors and limitation. During the time, many female poets expressed their support for feminism and basic human rights. As for Rich, she and her husband divorced about three years ago in 1970, leaving her unrestricted from domestic women’s dilemma between the burden of family and the expression of their own thoughts and rights in other social settings.

The language of “Diving into the Wreck” is very different from Rich’s previous works. The poem is in free verse, which has more freedom and various expressions than traditional metric poems. Many would argue that such change indicates her transformation from a wife to a feminist and free spirit.  However, there are still some repetitions between lines as well. For example, “I go down” appears two times as individual lines, which can be interpreted as the narrator’s persistent determination of going deeper into the sea. It indicates that either the wreck is something very attractive to the narrator, or it forces the narrator to go and explore it.

The narrator goes alone because “I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team”, which suggests that Rich doesn’t want to depend on someone else. Jacques Cousteau was a French naval officer who built his reputation as a conservationist and marine scientist in the early twentieth century. However, the narrator decides to go alone because there is no one to trust. “I have to learn alone/ to turn my body without force/ in the deep element”, one has to face the past alone because it is exclusive to him or her, and it is not open to others.

The narrator’s purpose of coming to the wreck is to explore it and “I came to see the damage that was done/ and the treasures that prevail”. Women have been suffering from the patriarchy, and not all of them survive the pressure and expectations from society and the opposite sex. As a result, the poet wants to see what has been done to women in the past in the form of the wreck. Since at the time women were just beginning to awaken from the darkness, the narrator is also aware of the evil from the past so that he/she carries a knife.

Despite depicting the narrator as the only person going down to the wreck, Rich later in the poem uses first plural perspective “we”, and it is hard to tell whether the narrator is a woman or man. This could be the poet’s intention to see the past of both women and men. Although women are the primary victims, men also suffer because they are all “drowned”, and “we are the half-destroyed instruments”, which explains why people regardless of gender all have the same destiny --- death. The wreck is thus a symbol of the struggle and a resting place for women and men.

Rich is eager to find out what misfortunes happen to women, but all humans are bound by the rules of society and thus human rights are devalued no matter who is more authoritative.