Figurative Language In The Secretary Chant By Marge Piercy

There are many things that can make up a person. From their age, nationality, gender, personality, and personal beliefs, everyone is different in some way. In the poem, “The Secretary Chant,” written by Marge Piercy, the speaker is slowly being dehumanized as each of her body parts are referred to common office supplies. In 1970, the time that the poem was written, Marge Piercy was a secretary who worked long shifts and was constantly mistreated for the fact that she had the jo Piercy’s use of metaphors, imagery along with an added major shift is interpreted through the depressed eyes of a secretary who winds up giving up her humanity.
Along with the figurative language that Piercy uses, the poem also displays a major shift between the first two stanzas and the third stanza. In the first two stanzas, Piercy describes the …show more content…
In the first two stanzas, Piercy describes the speaker's body parts with office supplies such as a office desk and reams of paper. The following line, “My hips are a desk,” compares the hips of the speaker to a uniform and still desk (Piercy 1). In a Secretary’s office, or any office at that, you will always fna a desk. Desk are still and its main role is to be a flat surface so that work can be accomplished properly. A desk doesn’t have any other purpose other than to be still and stand properly. The secretary can be closely compared for the speakers only job is do what she’s told and serve her purpose. In another line, ‘My head is a badly organized file,” Piercy describes the mind of the speaker as confused and unorganized. The main purpose to file is to keep documents or papers in a neat fashion so that they are easily retrieved for future use. The speaker's head being and unorganized file, is lost and confused in her work. The metaphors used in the poem ultimately play a major role in supporting the theme of misjudgment by