Margaret Atwood Comparison

This Is a Photograph of Me is a poem written by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood in 1966. In 1995, Margaret Atwood published another fairly similar poem entitled: “Morning in the burned house”. The two poems were inspired by opposing, yet powerful and deadly forces of nature such as water and fire. There are many similarities between the two poems. To begin, the narrators of both poems are deceased. In addition, both poems explore the prevalent and recurring theme of illusion vs. reality and how things are not always as they seem. In addition, the tones for the two poems are also quite similar. The major difference that was noted between the two essays was the first poem began by expressing the beautiful aspects and then introduced the tragedy, while the second poem began by talking about the tragedy then talks about

The two poems are contrastive because they utilize different techniques to introduce and conclude the poems. For example, the poem “This is a photograph of me” begins by talking about all the beautiful aspects of the photograph and then reveals the harsher or saddening aspects of it later. In contrast, “Morning in the Burned House” starts off by talking about the tragedy, but in the end reveals that in spite of everything, the narrator is still “happy and incandescent”. The two different strategies of introducing and concluding the poem help develop the poems theme of illusion vs.