Marge Piercy’s, The Secretary Chant, describes a woman feeling dehumanized by her job to the point where it consumes her and she becomes the lifeless, inanimate objects she works with. Piercy expresses the secretary’s emotions across in a somewhat humorous way using metaphors, onomatopoeia, and repetition. The whole poem is an extended metaphor comparing a secretary to the office supplies surrounding her. Her role as a human is belittled and she is reduced to functionaries, not seeing herself as a living, breathing person anymore but as someone whose “breasts are mimeograph ink” and whose “feet bear casters” (Piercy 5-6). Piercey places emphasis on the fact that she is a “desk” and the other office equipment described, rather than claiming
