Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2017

reader and to the “men”) can “help” as “only…you are unique”, this touching on themes of

individuality as it shows that the Siren/narrator’s appeal to a single person’s supposed

uniqueness is what makes them “leap overboard”. Furthermore, the cliché that “you are

unique” speaks to every individual in society thus with the entirety of the population being

unique, they are not in fact unique. This is why the sirens and narrator find this a “boring

song” because it does indeed “work every time”.

The title Atwood’s poem is rather ambiguous and the starting stanza is mysterious,

automatically drawing the reader’s attention. Upon reading “Siren Song” it is thought that the

narrator is telling us about the “song” however as we draw to the conclusion of the poem the

reader realises that the poem has been the “Siren Song” the whole time, making the reader

victim to the sirens. This poem shows how easily “men” (in particular) can be easily fooled

into playing the hero and falling victim to the very thing that they sought to save (namely

pretty women). The Siren myth has thought to have been circulated since before eighth

century BC, Atwood has modernised the myth for contemporary audiences by writing in an

easy-to-understand conversational tone. The myth itself is almost an archetype for the ideas

society associates with enticing and “irresistible” villains who may appear as if they need

help or pretend to be innocent. Atwood uses the Greek myth to echo feminist ideas to modern

audiences. This is not dissimilar to Duffy’s poem Circe which also contains themes of

feminism and the obvious use of Greek myth makes these themes more significant to modern

audiences.

In Greek mythology, more specifically from the story of the Odyssey, Circe was a sorceress

famous for transforming men into pigs (Low and Stewart, 1994). This is mirrored in Duffy’s

poem, the “pig[s]… boar[s]… and swine” are metaphors for men. It can be assumed that the

narrator is the embodiment of Circe, and is basically a “recipe” describing the ways to

prepare a “sizzling pig on the spit”. Circe (as the narrator) is depicted as a controlling and

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Goldsmith