Atwood Variation Margaret Atwood's Dreamlike Term Paper

The narrator states that she would like to "give" her protective charms, to help the beloved guard against grief. She wants to help guide the person back to the waking state like a divine, loving and eternal presence of spiritual support. Whether the beloved is a child or a lover, the narrator's love is powerfully transcendent.

The English language refers to "falling" asleep and waking "up." Therefore, images of ascending and descending correspond to states of consciousness in Atwood's poem. When falling asleep, the narrator refers to "the cave where you must descend." After encountering the source of "grief at the center," the narrator notes that she would like to "follow / you up the long stairway." Again, Atwood stresses an attitude of selflessness and surrender by using the word "follow" and emphasizing it by placing it at the end rather than at the beginning of the following line. Leaving the word "follow" hanging at the end of the line draws the reader's attention toward it, taking the place of a rhyming couplet.

Likewise, the narrator does not want to "take" the beloved up the stairway because she does not want to interfere with her partner's self will. Even when she wants to protect her beloved from grief, the narrator does not state that she wants to take away or even alleviate that grief. She simply seeks to offer protective tools to strengthen that person's own character. The narrator seems to understand that the beloved needs to travel to the center of that grief in order to get through it and understand the pain. Atwood also urges self-sacrifice for love: the narrator wants to "become / the boat that would row you back." The narrator also offers another mystical symbol: "a flame / in two cupped hands" which serves as a beacon and a guide for the beloved.As the narrator accompanies her charge from sleeping back to the waking state, they row back. This symbol of the river Styx in Greek mythology shows how the sleeping state parallels death: a break with mundane reality or even the true home of the soul.

Variations on the Word Sleep" is written in free verse, apropos for a poem about dreaming. The diction Atwood uses is spiritual and sublime, also in keeping with the tone of the poem and its central theme. Atwood links her diction to common language imagery of falling asleep and ascending back to a waking state, using line breaks to emphasize that transition. The poet also associates the transition from waking to sleeping states with the breath. The breath changes noticeably when a person falls asleep; it becomes slower and deeper. Changes in breathing can cause a person to suddenly wake up or to fall asleep during the day. When the beloved comes awake, the narrator hopes the transition will occur "as easily as breathing in." In another instance of selfless love, the narrator states, "I would like to be the air / that inhabits you for a moment." Ironically, the narrator claims that that would make her "unnoticed" and….....