Blog Post 4 Topic 2 Tara Saljooghi

“Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich is poem that represents a deeper personal meaning about a ship wreck which supports an extended metaphor for her life. Reading this poem at a surface level, makes it seem as if it is what the title states: diving into a shipwreck. But, with great analysis, Rich has used the language of a conceit to acknowledge the struggles going on during the time the poem was written: civil rights movements and feminisms movement being some of the political struggles. Though a metaphor is a comparison between two dissimilar things, a conceit makes an extreme comparison between two dissimilar things making it a more elaborate metaphor. She uses the overall poem to describe the wreck and the disaster it has caused in relation to her life. Adrienne Rich uses the wreck as a metaphor as a dive into her life and her expression of thought.  

Rich grew up in a prominent family, lived the typical life in which she married and had kids, but she never felt truly happy. This time period was during a huge political movement in which America was going through civil rights and feminist movements. She had moved her family to New York City during this time period, participating in these ongoing political movements, becoming an activist.

Starting off in the first line she uses the statement “book of myths” to demonstrate the dominant patriarchal culture which existed and that being a woman having equal rights was a myth. Moving past this line, the overall poem describes the metaphor for her life, using the wreck as that connection. Rich had divorced her husband a few years before writing this poem so when she states “I am having to do this/not like Cousteau with his assiduous team/…but here alone/” exemplifying that she is alone but capable of doing this dive also proving that a woman is powerful and the myths she stated don’t exist, as she is proving. Also, there is a historical reference here: Jacques Cousteau who, according to biography.com was “a French undersea explorer and researcher who invented diving and scuba devices”. She uses this metaphor to show that she is not diving with a team, like Cousteau did, but rather alone to show that she is capable of being alone and that sometimes life has to be faced alone.

Adrienne Rich had a hard time conforming in her life and the dive is a metaphor for diving back into the life she wanted to have. She’s in the ocean for a new life, “First the air Is blue and then/ it is bluer and then green and then/ black I am blacking out…”. Using vivid descriptions to describe exactly what is happening to her and as the readers, we are experience this blackout as well. The colors slowly change from blue to green to black and we are able to picture that happening, she is diving into her new life. Here, her rich language allows the reader to feel as if we are there experiencing this dive beside her. Rich wanted a new life, therefore the colors represent those stages of life, and finally at black, she’s blending in with the wreck.

Overall, the language of this poem is a lot freer, not following the traditional poems we usually see. The purpose of the wreck was to express her feelings and her jump into a different world, one that she wanted to live.