Fall of Man Depicted in Atwoods Backdrop Addresses Cowboy Essay

Fall of Man portrayed in Atwoods  Backdrop Addresses cowpuncher   The sexual politics of the soldiery-woman relationship, or to a greater extent specifically the sexual exploitation of women by men, is a clear forethought in Margaret Atwoods Backdrop Addresses Cowboy. Although the oppressor-as-male theme is by no means an archetype source of poetic inspiration, Atwoods distinction is that she views the destructive man-woman relationship as a metaphor for, symptom and symbol of, bigger things. From the vantage-point of feminine consciousness, Margaret Atwood empahsizes the backdrop as being not only the woman, scarce also the land and the uncanny life of the universe the cowboy is both a man dead set(p) on personal gain (possibly an American based on Atwoods hefty anti-American sentiments in her novel, Surfacing) and an emissary of technological progress. The structure of the poem logically supports the theme of conflict and imperialism in that it is clearly di vided into two sections or camps. The first four stanzas offer a description of you, the righteous and heroical cowboy who brutalizes life without creating new life. The perspective shifts then from predator to pit in the final five stanzas as I, presented as exploited woman and exploited nature, addresses her antagonist. The tone or mood of Backdrop Addresses Cowboy also undergoes a change after the first four stanzas when the lector enters the tragic, joyless experience of one who is paying the equipment casualty of slaughter and desecration. At this point in the poem, it seems futile to consider whether or not the price should be paid and the metaphoric man-woman tension remains distrubingly unresolved. In footing of form, Backdrop Addresses Cowboy is written in open (org... ...esecrate, the emphatically set word of the climactic line in Backdrop Addresses Cowboy, emphasizes over again the backdrop as being not only the woman, but also the land and the eldritch life of the universe. As an emissary of technological progress, man has committed a sacreligious act against nature and humanity and his finalise embodies the fall of the spiritual, the historical and the rational. In Margaret Atwoods poem, then, the troubled man-woman relationship is symptom and symbol of a greater alienation within humanity. Mans past and present curelties to human, natural and spiritual life are expressesed metaphoricall in terms of a cowboy triumphant the West on a movie set, against a backdrop backup his heroism. Backdrop Addresses Cowboy offers a vision that is both desolate and conscious-expanding but it does not present answers.