Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2017

sirens find it “boring” to kill while Circe seemingly enjoys it. It seems throughout the poem

that the narrator is vengeful for no particular reason, the reader learns that Circe “once knelt

on this shining shore” when she was “younger… and hoping for men” this is a very personal

took into Circe’s past before she wants to “baste that sizzling pig on the spit once again”.

Eurydice by Margaret Atwood is based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice – a

couple that were married until Eurydice died and went to the Underworld. However, Orpheus

could bring her back to life if he could walk back out of the Underworld without looking

behind him. Unfortunately, at the last moment before Eurydice would have come back to life,

Orpheus glances behind him and his wife is lost to the Underworld forever. Eurydice is “a

song of joy and suffering”, with the narrator speaking in 2 nd person presumably to Eurydice.

The narration is distancing Eurydice from a male solely references as “he” (but could be

assumed to be Orpheus), this is representative of the distance between the realm of living and

dead. Eurydice could be interpreted as a ‘love poem’ however it could be viewed as a

struggle with domestic abuse and no remaining feelings of love between the couple. Carol

Ann Duffy’s Thetis also examines strong implications of domestic abuse, societal expectation

for women to conform, gender oppression, and social inequality.

In Eurydice, the first three stanzas could have possible links to domestic abuse however

further in the poem it would seem that there are themes ‘the power of love’. Atwood re-

creates this myth for modern audiences and in the first stanza the narrator is telling –

presumably Eurydice – that Orpheus has “come to look for [her]” and “that things will be

different up there Than they were last time” meaning that there was a possible previous

instance of domestic abuse. It seems that Eurydice “would rather have gone on feeling

nothing, emptiness and silence” as the narrator says that it would be “easier than the noise

and flesh of the surface”. This is related to Thetis in the sense that the narrators from both

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Goldsmith