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Siren Song Poem Summary

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This essay explores the ambivalence of siren’s intention in the poet ‘Siren Song’. Besides, techniques like enjambment and anaphora are involved in composing this poet to give readers a sense of suspense of the siren’s eagerness to acquire salvation. The use of monologue in this poem shapes a paradoxical theme, which makes the siren’s motivation blurry. In the context, the poem uses the word “song” three times in the first lines of three stanzas. The beginning stanzas are monologues of the siren. As the main subject of the stanzas, the song appears to be irresistibly attractive to the men, that it makes men jump over the board even if they see corpses where they are heading to. The footnote of the poem has clarified that this song is chanted …show more content…

The poet does so because the main theme of this poem is the siren gets too bored to stay on the island, and she is desperately looking for help to release herself. Basically, enjambment works by removing some punctuation at the end of the lines, and multiple lines can be linked together. As punctuation marks like comas are removed, it is easier to increase the suspense for readers to jump into next recurring scene with an abrupt ending of line; thus, creating hasty tone of the scenario. In this poem, the poet extensively uses enjambment with other effects to amplify the theme. For example, the arrangement of “I don’t enjoy it here squatting on this island” and “I don’t enjoy singing this trio” (Atwood, 14-17). Is the combination of parallelism, anaphora, and enjambment. It seems the poet deliberately puts two lines in two adjacent stanzas to create a tone of impulsiveness in which both the siren’s tedium and eagerness to leave are joined together. The use of parallelism, anaphora, and enjambment somewhat reveals the intention of the author, that the representation of the siren’s eagerness to leave is emphasized. In addition, the author extensively uses personification in this poem. It is worth noting that using personification in this scenario makes a sense of familiarity to the readers. Speaking in the tone of first person to call for help in person instead of a plain description of a siren can somehow arouse the empathy of the readers. The technique of enjambment accelerates such haste to make sure that readers can feel the ambient tone alongside the empathy of reading in first person. Thus, the enjambment makes the scenario vivid by adding hasty tone and personification. The quintessence of this poem is the combination of anaphora, parallelism, and personification that reveals the helplessness of trapping as a siren on the island and eagerness to crave for

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