Adrienne Rich

This essay will present the motif of the mapmaker in Adrienne Richs book telamon of the exhausting World. The stalks throughout the book will be extolled in this essay and dissected through the theme of this subject brought together through metaphor, concrete imagery and the bothusion to rest home as tumefy as destination which Rich suggests throughout her name in inventions both meta animal(prenominal), and real.Richs title verse of atlas of the Difficult World brings fore a verbalize which is cut into a duality of realism as well as a harsh sense of that reality. The images prevalent in this rime brings the images of the map into a bizarre reality which suggests a striking and honest concept of Americana in a disturbing light. This is the key factor of the theme of map in Richs atlas of the Difficult World which is, in the very least, best described as disturbing.The title poem relates to the referee the concept of womens work. This poem then imagines for the proof subscribers the mind of placement such as topographical, geographical or decorate Rich presents the concept to the contributor of where a adult female is in relation to the margins of the surface area.The poem promote expounds upon this notion by suggesting the idea, or rather of questioning the reader as to the nature of the cleaning fair sexs place in relation to our consciousness in a topographical sense of the term. This would seem as though Rich is delving into a political stream of consciousness, but it is in the map, in the geography, or landscape which rests as the pinnacle of the poems place as it relates to the reader.In the issue of maps, of place, Rich also brings forth the concept of roles, of patriarchy and the womans dialectic towards such a predestined role. Rich goes on to extrapolate from the concept of topography the idea of a womans place, or womens work.The poem is a tantalizing tease between the idea of womens work in the margins of the country, and th e map of womens preserve obsequious nature, but not her unrecorded consciousness as to her own definition of place. The title poem then serves as a gateway from the speaker to the reader through the path of topography into the un-traversed landscape of validatory and misguided concepts of what womens work is, and the conscious factor of that work and its place in the United States. The poem serves as an undercurrent to an alternative to the idea of landscape, of the United States in regards to feminism (as is a standard theme in Richs poems), politics, and personalized space.The way in which boundaries of the map (politics, consciousness, gender, etc.) argon disregarded by the speaker is a fundamental element in the poem this disregard allows for both the speaker and the reader to explore other beas of the typography, and the structure of such devices as gender, roles, etc.Thus, the speaker allows the reader to realize the relation of self, role, politics, and all of the above, to the composition of the atlas, and the role that an individual, or in this case, the role of the reader as a map readerI promised to show you a map you say but this is a mural then yes permit it be these argon small distinctions where do we see it from is the question (pt. II, ll. 22-24).Thus, the concept of personal roles comes into play in the poem as a question of view.The role of the narrator then is to allow the reader a luck to be guided through the atlas. The atlas in the poem pays attention to not provided geography but also stories such stories are in relation to historical facts as well as personal lives.This allows the reader to respond to the poem through various avenues of perspective such as they may be presented through historical place, and geography as well as body and assessment locations thus, severally reading of the poem by individual readers will give a distinguishable perspective of the atlas since each reader is coming from their own personal frame of reference.The poet, the narrator comes into the poem and suggests or brings forth to the reader the daring possibility of questioning their own place in the atlas, the landscape.This challenge is perpetuated from the concept of womens work, and the changing definition of what that entails, These are not roads / you knew me by. But the woman driving, walking, watching / for life-time and death, is the same (pt. I, ll. 77-79).The narrator presents women on the map, or the road to the reader, and the reader in turn conk outs an active bureau of the poem since the reader brings their own interpretation through personal reference to the perspective of these women.The poems then are different roads along the entirety of the atlas, and the question which the poet reiterates to the reader is where do the poems take the reader which wariness? Thus, affirmation of the role of the map is a central motif in Richs Atlas of a Difficult World.The following poems of Atlas of a Difficult World then are each designed as a road into the different parts of the atlas on different levels and from different perspectives. The poems are not limited to the topography of the atlas but also delve into the history of the place. in that respect are thirteen parts of the book which in turn are vignettes which come from a myriad of womens lives.The voice which Rich lends to each story is relatively urgent and gives the reader a sense that it is authoritative that they read these lines not only for the benefit of the woman who lived the story but for the readers personal benefit since it is with the reader that a continuation and change in the story may occur. This allows the reader to become part of an oral history for the nation, and thus a map maker in a sense, as memory is presented by Rich as a type of map, it is with this metaphor that the poems progress. It is by recognizing the importance of history, tear down in small characters that allows for the roles of women to change fro m obsequious to strong willed from patriarchal to gynocentric. Richs purpose in her poems is a striking narrative of forcing the reader to notice how women baffle been excluded in large part from the history, the geography of the land, the United States history.Thus, through use of landscape and the connection of landscape to events, Rich gives the reader a chance to notice these women.In Part I of Atlas of a Difficult World, Rich gives testimonies from a myriad of women who have a vast knowledge of economic hardship which incites fear and which either delays or spurns action forward. There is also a theme of silence and the breaking of silence in the atlas, the memory of these moments with the different women in the poems.There is one poem which gives details of an unknown woman who was murdered The woman was a farm doer who had been in deep exposure to toxins Malathion in the throat, communion, / the hospital at the edge of the fields, / prematures slipping from unsafe wombs (ll . 8-10).This woman has a type of communion with death, and her character is anonymous because there are countless other women who are or were in the same situation, so many that their story became one story it had been told too oftentimes that the names were unimportant and then, eventually her story was forgotten. Rich brings the concept of the mapmaker as a memory harvester into her poems to give the reader an interactive part in the poem.Since this story is being retold to the reader, the reader must withdraw it in their memory, and thus give credit to the live that died, to the woman. The woman had been oppressed and exposed to environmental dangers, and because the woman had worked to survive but died anyway, it is important that her life be chartered into this atlas of memory, of story.Rich does not loss the idea of denial of memory to play a major role in the development of the country, of the atlas as she writes, I dont want to hear how he beat her . . ., / tore up her wr iting . . . / . . . I dont want to know / wreckage (ll. 39-40, 48-49).The interesting factor in this womans story is that her small death is rattling a beginning of a national cover up story, and thus, her story becomes part of the landscape of history, merely minute. The womans death is a national cover up which involved violence and amoral carriage and which were the opposite of the striving of America, in industry. Through the denial of this story, history is changed, is made false through the abet of the media.This theme of denial changes the landscape of the map, it erases important structures of the geography, and this lead into Part V of Atlas of a Difficult World in which a queer woman is murdered and yet, her story does not succumb to expungingI dont want to know how he tracked them along the Appalachian Trail, hid close by their tent, pitch as they thought in seclusion killing one woman, the other dragging herself into town his acknowledgment they had teased his loat hing of what they were I dont want to know but this is not a bad ideate of mine (ll. 45-51).In Parts II and III, the poem becomes an evocation of the American ideal or geography. The poems exercise their voice towards symmetry or balance in history in which womens history is not erased or ruined or made to seem slavish, but instead integrates the real roles of women.In Part IV the poems lay in mourning of the women lost in the margins of the atlas, whose stories were covered up or never known, and the poem cries for still unbegun work of repair (1. 25). In this part, women are alluded to as prisoners, locked away out of sight and hearing, out of mind, shunted aside / those demand to teach, advise, persuade, weigh arguments / those urgently needed for the work of perception (ll. 19-21).It seems that Rich is suggesting that these women were covered up in the landslip of the country, or that they were unchartered in its conception, unrecognized.In Parts VI-VIII Rich gives the allusi on of the map and the lives of the women unraveling which becomes apparent as the men in the stories, or poems went on dreaming large dreams in the landscape of the history of the atlas, while the women went on with much(prenominal) stories of contention, they women went on without receiving.Rich goes on to state in these parts that the men continued in the map of the country thinking, and Rich suggests the irony of this by stating, Slaves you would not be that (pt. VI, l. 14). This is a main point made by Rich in which she is stating that the men did not allow themselves to be considered or made slaves through physical force nor psychological devices but that women and others had to bear that history.There is a culmination of the focus of map making in Parts IX-XI which studies the fragmentation of the atlas through false history, as Rich states through the narrator, one woman / like and unlike so many, fooled as to her destiny, the scope of her task (pt. XI, ll. 16-17).In Part X II Rich gives the reader a chance of seeing restoration in the land through the recognition of womens roles and determine by giving the reader these lines to ponder, What homage will be paid to a beauty build to last / from inside out . . . / I didnt speak then / of your beauty at the wheel beside me . . . / I speak of them now (ll. 1-2, 9-10, 18).Thus, being a mapmaker, or a keeper of true history is the bequest Rich gives to her readers. It is through the role of speaking and not remaining silent, of allowing the atlas to grow, and of exploring the roads which were once unchartered that Richs motif of map making is an allusion to recognition of womens history, as Rich writes, I know you are reading this poem throughout the last part because the poem aspires to be zero less than the unspoken, archetypal stories women know well.Rich concludes, I know you are reading this poem because there is energy else left to read / there where you have landed, stripped as you are (ll. 36-37 ) which in its honesty gives women a place on the atlas of the United States instead of remaining in the margins, in the back alleys of the topography.Work CitedRich, A. An Atlas of a Difficult World. W.W. Norton & Company. 1991.