Margaret Atwood's Later In Belleville: Career

Margaret Atwood has a tendency to compare and contrast ideas or concepts in her poetry. In many of her pieces of work, she introduces a concept for her readers to grasp, then she inserts another idea that causes the reader to look at the two concepts in different lights. Two poems that she has written that do this are, “At the Tourist Centre in Boston” and “Comic Books vs. History (1949, 1969)”. Another way she uses contrast is showing a gradual change in a character and outlook over time. One poem that is a prime example of this is, “Later in Belleville: Career”. Atwood is notorious for many styles of writing, but one of her most famous is to compare and contrast two notions or entities.
In the poem, “At the Tourist Centre in Boston”, the …show more content…
One poem that is more subtle about it is “Later in Belleville: Career”. This poem shows the complete change of a person’s life through art - or the lack of it. In the first two stanzas, the speaker says, “Once by a bitter candle / of oil and braided / rags, I wrote / verses about love and sleighbells // which I exchanged for potatoes; ” (1-5). These first five lines show how she is in doubt and depression. The speaker uses words like “bitter” to express sorrow. She trades her art for the simplest of necessities to stay alive. Later in the poem, she says, “in the summers I painted butterflies / on a species of white fungus / which were bought by the tourists, glass- / cased for English parlours // and my children (miraculous) wore shoes.” (6-11). She talks about how she paints butterflies on fungus which is not something a prospering artist would typically paint on. She also mentions how her children miraculously wear shoes which is a definite sign of a struggling person. The second to last stanza says, “Now every day / I sit on a stuffed sofa / in my own fringed parlour, have / uncracked plates (from which I eat / at intervals) / and a china teaset.” (12-17). This stanza is where the tone of the poem completely changes and the contrast starts to show. She begins to talk about how she has her own parlour which shows that she has made enough money to support herself and her children and the parlour. She also says she eats at intervals on uncracked plates which suggests that she has enough food and is capable of eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner and does not have to sell her art for potatoes to find a meal for her and her family. The very last line of the poem is where the biggest sense of contrast is present. The speaker says, “There is no use for art.” (18). This is contradicting because she uses her writings and paintings to feed her and her children which is very useful.