Critical Analysis for “The Door”
In "The Door", Margaret Atwood wants readers to know that one only entrust themselves to darkness and loneliness when one is isolated from human connections Each of the stanzas focus on different periods of a woman 's life, who the speaker is addressing through a second person 's point of view. The speakers is an observer, who watches the woman gradually ages stanza by stanza, from childhood and adolescence to maturity and old age. The plot has indications of literal death, but in this case, it 's the decay of happiness because intimate connections with other people are cut off, leaving the woman to "confide [herself] to the darkness", which is interpreted as loneliness (line 55). In addition to the progression …show more content…
This stanza begins with the door swinging open and ends with the door swinging closed, which is also repeated in the adolescence, maturity, and old age section of the poem. Here, the character refuses to enter the doorway because of the "dark" and the connotation that is associated with it like "spiders", which then evoked fear that causes the character to "feel scared" (line 3-6). The character 's feeling give rises to a gloomy mood that is carry on throughout the poem. The first stanza focuses on childhood because the imagery that arises from line 3-6 and the connotation of "scared" brings about an image of a little child. The character addressed by the speaker is afraid of the dark and spiders. The character exemplifies a need for protection like a child does. According to this interpretation, line 1 marks the beginning of childhood or birth. The character is still developing more human connections and therefore, does not give in and step over to the other side of the door that symbolizes …show more content…
The woman 's health begins to decline in line 29 and she reflects on how easier it was for her to "clear the walk" before. Line 31 indicates that her children has grown up and moved away because she receives a "telephone" call sometimes from her children. Rather than separating activities in the fifth stanza like Atwood did in the third stanza using commas, she uses periods to punctuate whenever possible in this stanza. The sound of this stanza when read aloud is slowed down signifying how there are things that needs to be complete as this point in the woman’s life, but she must take her time to do it, which adds on to the old age interpretation. For this section, the plot are written in the fifth and seventh stanzas and the responses to the door is described in two stanzas too: the sixth stanza and the eighth stanza. In the sixth stanza, it is evident that the woman or character’s curiosity increases when the number of lines progressively increases among the stanzas that refer to the swinging door. This stanza, compared to the second and fourth stanza, has four lines embedded between the repetitive first and last line (line 36-39). This make senses between her attention is shifted away from the door in second stanza and slowly shifts back to the door in fourth and sixth stanza. This increase in curiosity in inversely proportional to the woman’s human connections. During this period, her children are not there
In "The Door", Margaret Atwood wants readers to know that one only entrust themselves to darkness and loneliness when one is isolated from human connections Each of the stanzas focus on different periods of a woman 's life, who the speaker is addressing through a second person 's point of view. The speakers is an observer, who watches the woman gradually ages stanza by stanza, from childhood and adolescence to maturity and old age. The plot has indications of literal death, but in this case, it 's the decay of happiness because intimate connections with other people are cut off, leaving the woman to "confide [herself] to the darkness", which is interpreted as loneliness (line 55). In addition to the progression …show more content…
This stanza begins with the door swinging open and ends with the door swinging closed, which is also repeated in the adolescence, maturity, and old age section of the poem. Here, the character refuses to enter the doorway because of the "dark" and the connotation that is associated with it like "spiders", which then evoked fear that causes the character to "feel scared" (line 3-6). The character 's feeling give rises to a gloomy mood that is carry on throughout the poem. The first stanza focuses on childhood because the imagery that arises from line 3-6 and the connotation of "scared" brings about an image of a little child. The character addressed by the speaker is afraid of the dark and spiders. The character exemplifies a need for protection like a child does. According to this interpretation, line 1 marks the beginning of childhood or birth. The character is still developing more human connections and therefore, does not give in and step over to the other side of the door that symbolizes …show more content…
The woman 's health begins to decline in line 29 and she reflects on how easier it was for her to "clear the walk" before. Line 31 indicates that her children has grown up and moved away because she receives a "telephone" call sometimes from her children. Rather than separating activities in the fifth stanza like Atwood did in the third stanza using commas, she uses periods to punctuate whenever possible in this stanza. The sound of this stanza when read aloud is slowed down signifying how there are things that needs to be complete as this point in the woman’s life, but she must take her time to do it, which adds on to the old age interpretation. For this section, the plot are written in the fifth and seventh stanzas and the responses to the door is described in two stanzas too: the sixth stanza and the eighth stanza. In the sixth stanza, it is evident that the woman or character’s curiosity increases when the number of lines progressively increases among the stanzas that refer to the swinging door. This stanza, compared to the second and fourth stanza, has four lines embedded between the repetitive first and last line (line 36-39). This make senses between her attention is shifted away from the door in second stanza and slowly shifts back to the door in fourth and sixth stanza. This increase in curiosity in inversely proportional to the woman’s human connections. During this period, her children are not there