The Photograph Of Me And Morning In The Burnt House By Margaret Atwood

The poems The Photograph of Me and Morning in the Burnt House by Margaret Atwood are focus on illusion and reality and the way that they interact and distort the perception of the viewer as reality battles with the individual's memories or imagination. In the poem This Is a Photograph of Me the author looks onto a canvas the smears resembling a print of some sort, and after some time this smudge turns into a seemingly peaceful scenery with the dark truth of her death hidden below the details. Within the first stanza she starts off by looking at the painting stating”At first it seems to be a smeared print: blurred lines and grey flecks blended with the paper.” As she continues to stare her imagination starts to wander and as the smear begins to turn into the branches of a tree and beside it she begins to see the roof of a house. Later on a lake appears with hills behind it, and with her imagination running wild and out of control her mind begins to drift towards the dark possibility of her death as shown in the lines “The photograph was taken the day after I drowned.” As her mind struggles to understand the concept of her own death in her imagination she struggles to find herself under the water shown in the line “effect of water on light is a distortion.” The poem then eventually ends when she sees herself within her own imagination and …show more content…
As she stares at the house she shifts between the the reality of what she sees towards the memories she holds. This is portrayed by her transition from the ashes and debris left behind by the burned house to a near picture perfect portrayal of her former residence. The poem starts with the burnt house with no signs of of any inhabitants to be seen. The author than inputs subtle signs to imply that there is still something left within the ashes. This is shown in the second stanza with the lines “The spoon which was melted scrapes