Summary Of The Poem Essay, Rape

Decent Essays
Comparably, Rape by Adrienne Rich uses language to depict a violent representation of male/female roles in relation to sex and the reflection of these roles in wider society. Rich’s direct choice of title sets the reader up for a description of the sex act itself, but in fact goes on to describe the repercussions of the subjects rape and presents an exploration of societal attitudes towards victims of sexual assault. By approaching the subject in the aftermath of the act, Rich suggests that the suffering caused by societies treatment of rape victims may be greater than the suffering caused by the sexual assault itself. Rich’s use of evocative language serves to display the subjects feelings of fear and the lack of sympathy that stem from …show more content…
In the poem, the dance can be seen as symbolic of the act of sex. Jane views the sexual passion of youth with longing. Jane’s relation with the youthful girl in the poem is expressed in the first stanza when Jane finds herself unable to intervene when the girls “chosen youth” moves to “strangle her” (Yeats 2, 4). This feeling is intensified in the second stanza when she leaves the boy “to his fate” (11). This depiction of sexual violence is comparative to the act which occurs in Leda and the Swan, however, instead of condemning sexual violence as a horrific show of masculinity, Yeats draws attention to the feelings of pleasure attached to the intensity of hatred “they had all that had their hate,” conveying the extremes of love and hate, sadism and masochism. “Love is like the lion’s tooth” is repeated at the end of each of the three stanzas to indicate that sexual passion is not the comfort as suggested in Duffy’s Anne Hathaway, but is instead torture (7, 14, 21). Yeats’ represents violence both against the female character “he wound her coal-black hair / As though to strangle her” and against the male character “drew a knife to strike him dead” in order to communicate the idea that sex is a reciprocal act, there is equal agony for each of the partners (2-3, 10). Repetition of “die” and inversion the word order between lines fifteen and sixteen in the final stanza of the poem, suggests that the persona’s fear of death and her inability to confront this fear, instead expressing her longing for the time when she engaged in the ‘dance’ (15-16). Yeats’ use of language guides the reader to the conclusion that there is mutual antipathy between the sexes, inextricably linked with the fundamental concept of sexual

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Not only does rape and the idea of “predator and prey” exist in the real world, but it is becoming a normal part of college, high school, and even middle school culture--commonly being referred to as “rape culture”. “By using the label of “rape culture”, this gives power to the idea of a societal undercurrent in which all women are treated as objects by all men who escape any responsibility whatsoever.” (Ross) Evidently, women are still seen as objects in many societies, and Speak does an excellent job of highlighting this injustice and showing the struggles one goes through when confronted with rape and…

    • 614 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rape is a powerful word that can cause a lot of pain to a victim. The thought of being categorized as a “victim”, is not what one may hope for. Yet, there is always a possibility that the victim may not report this horrific crime. In the book Missoula, we hear the stories of brave young women who came forward to tell their stories. Yet,what makes these cases so appalling is how they were handled.…

    • 1004 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As time fades into history all aspects of life change. The United States past is truly two different worlds compared to present day America. In Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s, A Midwife’s Tale the drastic difference between women now compared to women during the erection of the United States is shown through the journals of Martha Ballard. The journals take place between 1785-1812 right in the thick of the creation of the United States. Laurel Thatcher uses the journal excerpts to show what it was like to be a woman back when men ran almost every aspect of life during this time.…

    • 1241 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Date rape remains a common problem in the United States. Although typically misunderstood and unreported, the crime of unwanted intercourse brought upon by a familiar individual has become a subject of national concern. Authors Camille Paglia and Susan Jacoby express their opposing views as to the cause of the crime in their articles “Rape: A Bigger Danger Than Feminists Know” and “Common Decency”. While Paglia and Jacoby have conflicting arguments, Jacoby's use of ethos, logos and pathos outdo that of Paglia's, making her argument the most effective of the two regarding who is at fault for the crime of date rape. Susan Jacoby is a well-known writer and newspaper reporter which gives her much credibility.…

    • 2004 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    On Date Rape and Fallacious Arguments Camille Paglia is not a stranger to writing divisive editorials. As a self-proclaimed ‘social critic’, she said in response to criticism of her first book “Sexual Personae” published in 1990, “it was intended to please no one, and to offend everyone” (20Q). Thus, it should be no surprise that she has views on date rape that are unpopular for the current social mindset. In her editorial “On Date Rape”, Paglia declares “my kind of feminism stresses personal responsibility”, and concludes that if women are raped, it is because they do not acknowledge the inherent risk of interacting with men and are not protecting themselves accordingly (144, 145). In the editorial, Paglia is unapologetically unsympathetic…

    • 1336 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “In No Turning Back” Estelle Freedman mostly gives international examples of the threat or action of rape to terrorize women. Despite a lack of examples from America in her article, the threat and actin of rape to control a woman’s behavior is existent on a daily basis in this country. One example that comes to mind is in marriage. For example, if a man and a woman are married, and the woman is a stay at home man, who depends on her husband as the only source of income, the threat of rape might be present in the relationship. If the husband wants to have sex with his wife, but she doesn’t want to, he might force her into it even if she doesn’t want to because of the fact that without that husband she would have no source of income.…

    • 342 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ask an average teenager what they know about sexual assault, and they may refer to “locker room talk” or dramatized rape scenes in movies. It is misconceptions like these that can drive a victim further into seclusion, because their situation is so unknown to the average person, leaving them in solitary. In the United States alone, one in five women and one in seventy-five men will be raped at some point throughout their lifetime, yet only 37% of these incidents are reported to authorities (Department of Justice 1). There are many factors that contribute to this, but one major reason this occurs is that victims feel as if they are on one's own and lack someone to assist them in their time of need.…

    • 1048 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Essay On Campus Rape

    • 2198 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Accompanying the resurgence of popular ‘feminism’, the discussion of rape and sexual assault in places of work, education and duty have been brought to the table for awareness and reform. In many cases the justice system works against victims. Too many stories tell the events of detectives and district attorneys inappropriately favoring the accused and not attempting to investigate the claim of the victim. Further accounts of colleges and universities not complying with regulation to investigate all assault allegations and report felony charges to the police are prevailing as pressure by donors to maintain a pristine reputation dominates judgment. The term ‘rape’ is often substituted with the phrase, “It was a misunderstanding.”…

    • 2198 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This poem dramatizes the conflict between actually feeling love and the act of making love. In Sharon Old’s “Sex without Love” the speaker floats in the third person as more of a scientist experimenting with love. On the surface love is mirrored through the imagery of “beautiful as dancers “and “great runners” (Olds 2-3); making love, as Sutton said “favorable” (178). To continue this praise for loveless-love, Sutton points out that in lines fourteen and fifth teen: “the ones who will not / accept a false Messiah, love the / priest instead of the God.” sex without love is “holier” and more sophisticated “because their highest urges are not grounded in the physical” (178).…

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Roxane Gay - Reading Response The three readings by Roxane Gay talks about rape culture and men. The idea that rape has more of a negative effect on men rather than women. The idea that the impact is more detrimental to the rapist rather that the victim is something that occurs in these readings a lot. In Careless Language of Sexual Violence, Gay talks about the case of James McKinley Jr., where the focus was more on the lives of the men, rather than the 11-year-old child who was raped by 18 men, ranging from the ages of middle school boys to 27 year olds.…

    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jackson Katz’s didactic tone emphasizes the gender violence issues in society through the points made “ in the domestic and sexual violence field know [as] victim-blaming” as well as how with “power and privilege, [there is] the ability to go unexamined.” How we think conspires us to keep our attention off of men; instead of pursuing the perpetrator we now follow the victim. We use the violence or pain that has happened to someone to identify/label that person. Victim blaming has become prominent in our society today. The power and privilege that some people hold has allowed them to silence the voices of many.…

    • 207 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Slut Walk Research Paper

    • 1234 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Slut Walks On August 12 , 2012, a 16 year old girl, incapacitated by alcohol, was sexually assaulted and unknowingly photographed by two of high school football players, Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond. Following the attack, the boys posted videos and pictures of the victim on social media boasting about their actions and further humiliating the victim. Several school officials attempted to conceal and destroy evidence to avoid an investigation. However, ten days later charges were pressed triggering a chain of events that would quickly gain national media spotlight and be referred to as the Steubenville rape case.…

    • 1234 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Victims Poem Analysis

    • 1110 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Upon initial reading, “The Victims” by Sharon Olds seems to be a poem that paints the picture of a life of abuse; starting from the dawning of the exploitation and arching over into the life of the abused following the maltreatment. In the work, it is made to be believed that the clear victims of the poem are the speaker and their family—which is a rightful and obvious assumption—but there is another victim that is not as prevalent as that of the speaker and their family: the speaker’s father. After a second read, it is made evidently apparent that although the work does focus on the speaker and their family as the victims of the poem, the ideal that the father is also a victim is explored. Since the father is depicted as an abuser, it is seen…

    • 1110 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Every weekend around the world, young adults get together for a night promising good fun and plenty of booze at fraternity houses associated with colleges that they might attend, with the sole intent of becoming extremely intoxicated. For some, a night of fun turns into a nightmare and they find themselves with hazy memories of drunken sex that they would likely not have consented to had they been sober. Events such as these are even regularly depicted in television programs and movies. This refers to rape culture, defined by Emilie Buchwald, author of Transforming a Rape Culture, as “a complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women.” It is the notion that sexual violence is just something that happens; that it is just the way that things are.…

    • 784 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Indeed, the story, despite being short, deeply examines the various psychological impacts of rape culture among women. This in turn, provides us with a clear and quite disturbing glimpse into the consequences of acquiesce to violence. In particular we are treated to the intimate, unsettling details of the protagonist, Estelle’s, confusion about sexual assault. From the beginning of the story, Estelle makes an…

    • 1064 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays