Exploring the Text

1. What is your initial reaction to the poem’s first stanza? Where did you think it was going? Were you expecting it to be metaphorical or did you think it might be a poem about deep-sea diving? Explain your answer.

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - What is your initial reaction to the poem’s first stanza? Where did you think it was going? Were you expecting it to be metaphorical or did you think it might be a poem about deep-sea diving? Explain your answer.
2. You probably realized pretty quickly that “Diving into the Wreck” is an extended metaphor. What do you think the parts of it represent? Try to imagine what the objects—the book, the camera, the body armor, the flippers, and so on—might represent inside and outside the metaphorical world Adrienne Rich creates in this poem.

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - You probably realized pretty quickly that “Diving into the Wreck” is an extended metaphor. What do you think the parts of it represent? Try to imagine what the objects—the book, the camera, the body armor, the flippers, and so on—might represent inside and outside the metaphorical world Adrienne Rich creates in this poem.
3. How does the ladder in the second stanza provide both a literal and a metaphorical shift in the poem?

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - How does the ladder in the second stanza provide both a literal and a metaphorical shift in the poem?
4. What signals do the stanza breaks provide?

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - What signals do the stanza breaks provide?
5. What do you think it means that the speaker has become both “the mermaid whose dark hair streams back” and “the merman in his armored body” (ll. 72–73)?

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - What do you think it means that the speaker has become both “the mermaid whose dark hair streams back” and “the merman in his armored body” (ll. 72–73)?
6. While Rich gives no hint of what the scene of disaster in the second-to-last stanza represents, it might be interesting to know that the poem was written in the early 1970s, a time of intense change and political engagement, and that Rich was considered a feminist poet. Does that change your view of the stanza’s meaning?

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - While Rich gives no hint of what the scene of disaster in the second-to-last stanza represents, it might be interesting to know that the poem was written in the early 1970s, a time of intense change and political engagement, and that Rich was considered a feminist poet. Does that change your view of the stanza’s meaning?
7. Remembering that there is no “right” answer to this question, who do you think the “our” is in the poem’s last line?

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - Remembering that there is no “right” answer to this question, who do you think the “our” is in the poem’s last line?
8. Does this poem leave you feeling sad or uplifted? Or some other emotion altogether? Explain your answer.

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - Does this poem leave you feeling sad or uplifted? Or some other emotion altogether? Explain your answer.