Analysis Of The Anthology Diving Into The Wreck - 1221 Words

Philosopher and writer, Jiddu Krishnamurti, says the following in a 1967 â€Å"Public Talk†: â€Å"when all authority of every kind is put aside, denied, then you can find out for yourself.† This statement characterizes authority -- â€Å"the ability to assert or influence† – as a governing force that ultimately supersedes identity, as its absence allows for one to â€Å"find out,† or create individual perceptions (OED). Similarly, this conflict of authority and identity manifests in the works of author, Adrienne Rich. Specifically, through its literary form, â€Å"Rape,† in the anthology Diving into the Wreck (1973), exposes the negative effects of a domineering male power by evaluating the deprivation of female identity that occurs as a consequence. It is†¦show more content†¦As such, these lines represent a loss of identity as â€Å"a unique self† in the speaker, by exemplifying the generalized female stereotype of submissi veness (OED). Rather than possessing an individual autonomy of the event’s details, the speaker â€Å"(has) to confess,† and so, loses the ability to command, or contain, the situation as they desire by instead having to â€Å"yield† the information (13) (OED). Moreover, the act of rape itself, serves as another example of the loss of female identity to a male influence. For instance, rape is â€Å"sexually forcing oneself onto another without consent† (OED). By acting without permission, a rapist effectively denies human rights to their victims, compelling them to a state of submission and dehumanizing them into the equivalent of physical property (OED). In her critical essay, Rich recognizes this idea of objectification by writing that, â€Å"Man’s power (is) to [†¦] choose or reject the woman,† just as one can choose or reject an item (Rich, 6). She extends this to the text through the line, â€Å"the maniac’s sperm still gre asing your thighs,† as the rapist has marked the speaker with a physical reminder of their essence to transform them from a person into the evidence of a crime (12). Hence, in the metaphor of predator and prey along with the conflict of dehumanization, a gender hierarchy within the poem emerges that promotes male control and as an effect limits the prominence of ‘self’