Fall of Man Depicted in Atwoods Backdrop Addresses Cowboy Essay

Fall of Man Depicted in A cardinalods  Backdrop Addresses Cowboy   The internal politics of the man-woman relationship, or more specifically the sexual exploitation of women by men, is a clear concern in Margaret Atwoods Backdrop Addresses Cowboy. Although the oppressor-as-male theme is by no means an original source of poetic inspiration, Atwoods line 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, yet in addition the land and the spiritual life of the universe the cowboy is both a man bent on personal gain (possibly an American ground on Atwoods strong 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 divided into two sections or camps . The first four stanzas offer a description of you, the righteous and heroic cowboy who brutalizes life without creating new life. The perspective shifts then from predator to forego in the final five stanzas as I, presented as victimized 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 reader enters the tragic, joyless experience of one who is paying the price 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 terms of form, Backdrop Addresses Cowboy is pen in open (org... ...esecrate, the emphatically placed word of the climactic line in Backdrop Addresses Cowboy, emphasizes again the backdrop as being not only the woman, but also the land and the spiritual life of the universe. As an emissary of technological progress, m an has committed a sacreligious act against nature and valet de chambre and his fall 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, inwrought and spiritual life are expressesed metaphoricall in terms of a cowboy winning the West on a movie set, against a backdrop reenforcement his heroism. Backdrop Addresses Cowboy offers a vision that is both desolate and conscious-expanding but it does not present answers.