Margaret Atwood The Sirens

The Sirens In Greek Mythology, The Sirens have always played an important role. The Sirens have been known for killing men, wrecking ships, and singing their luring song to those who dare pass. It’s a tale that teaches a valuable lesson to readers. People will always persuade you to do things you don’t want to do by using many different techniques, like seduction. The ones who have survived The Sirens outsmarted them, which is equivalent to reality when people say no to negative things. In the painting Ulysses and The Sirens, John Williams Waterhouse uses the journey of Ulysses when he confronts the Sirens to show that women seduce men with their natural beauty and trust is important in difficult times, while in her poem “Siren Song”, Margaret Atwood uses the same scene to show that women are beautiful, but they have more of a purpose than being used by men. Margaret Atwood wrote “Siren Song” to give The Siren’s point of view, since all the attention is on the men throughout Greek Mythology. Atwood is known for writing about real life issues, and in this poem it reflects equality (Behrens). In the poem it says,“I don’t enjoy it here.” (Atwood) which is symbolic. The Sirens reflect women in everyday life, because most women don’t have a voice. The Sirens do use seduction to tempt the men to do whatever they

Waterhouse have used The Sirens in Greek Mythology to inspire them. The Sirens are a classic in Greek Mythology where they lure men to their deaths, as both Atwood and Waterhouse show. Atwood puts the focus on The Sirens rather than keeping the main focus on Odysseus being seduced like Waterhouse did. Greek Mythology always teaches a valuable lesson, and this teaches resisting temptation. This connects with everyone because temptation occurs in everybody’s lives at one point, but we must fight it like Odysseus did, or we will fall like many have in the past. This same lesson that was taught a long time ago,is still relevant to this