Poetry Blog # 2

In The Secular Night by Margaret Atwood

“If one is not connected with God and other people, then one will risk falling into loneliness and despair.”

There are three stanzas in this poem. The first stanza reflects upon the speaker’s past when she was sixteen. The next stanza then transitions forty years later, the present. The last stanza ends with the speaker’s ideas about God. This transition from past to present to the speaker’s thoughts is very significant to the message of this poem.

We can see that Atwood used a 2nd person point of view to bring a more lonely and isolated mood to the poem. Also, in the first two stanzas, past and present, Atwood highlights many times of the speaker’s isolation and unstableness. These two stanzas result because of the speaker’s views mentioned in the third stanza. She wanted to show that being isolated from society and feeling distant from God can result a person in loneliness and despair. There are many literary devices that affect the mood, tone, and rhythm of this poem as well.

Through this poem, perhaps Atwood is trying to tell many of us need to be careful. She is warning us that many of us are not connected with God and other people, and could fall into loneliness and despair. Look at the last sentence of the poem, “The century grinds on.” The word “grinds” gives a negative connotation. This tells that even the world is not connected with God. Atwood had her up and down moments with her relationship with God. Maybe she is portraying her experiences and views about God in this poem, and wants to give us a chance to avoid that risk of becoming left out and isolated from God and others.