Spelling Margaret Atwood

TITLE ONE
The name of the poem is “Spelling” by Margaret Atwood. My first impression of the poem gives me the sense it is about a child at school learning how to write and spell. The first line continues to say, ‘my daughter’ this gives me the idea that the poem perhaps refers to motherhood helping her daughter build the basic skills of life as she plays with her ‘plastic letters’.
PARAPHRASE
I believe the poet is using metaphorical context to show her struggles of being a female as well as a writer. She illuminates the conflict of motherhood and barriers women go through in the present and past. It begins as an innocent act – a free child playing with plastic letters od the alphabet, it then transmutes into an oppressed and dispirited woman,

The use of the word daughter signifies that the poem is about motherhood. She is then described as playing with “red blue and hard yellow”. These are three primary colours that could metaphorically depict that her daughter is learning the basic blocks of life. In the next line of the first stanza the poet says, “how to spell”, “spelling” and “how to make spells”. In my opinion these could refer to the stages of a girl’s life. Firstly, she learns how to spell, then she can start spelling to read and write words and then “make spells” which could be interpreted as casting a spell on a man (making him fall in love with her), it could also be linked to witchcraft which is mentioned later in the poem. Atwood uses the verse “I wonder how many women denied themselves daughters… A child is not a poem, a poem is not a child”, In this stanza Atwood is describing the conditions of being a woman. Women must neglect their children in order to be successful. They can either nourish their children or write, thus showing the struggle between having a profession and

I also believe that it could be referring to the Holocaust as she describes, “at the melting point of granite when the bones know they are hollow”, this is also an example of personification. Another view point for this quote could be that these women were burnt with their powerful words as well as it being a metaphor for their suppressed talent. Metaphorically this stanza could be suggesting that the voices of women are killed and silenced as seen in “The burning witch, her mouth covered by leather to strangle words”. I believe the end of the poem is extremely powerful as Atwood says, “Your on name first, your first naming, your first name, your first word” I interpret this as Atwood saying that nobody can name themselves and that they are always named by someone else. Atwood uses various literary devices to illustrate a detailed