Margaret_Atwood's_“You_Fit_Into_Me”

Margaret Atwood’s “You Fit Into Me” starts off as a conventional love poem, but through the use of a simile becomes dark and disturbing. The simile is found in the first two lines of the poem, where the author writes, “You fit into me / like a hook into an eye.” (“You Fit Into Me” 1 - 2). Here, Atwood first is describing a relationship of two people, and then comparing it to a clothing fastener. The fastener is a hook and eye closure, which can be found on women’s clothing, and more specifically on women’s intimate apparel, such as a bra. Atwood may have chosen to use the reference to the hook and eye, to show that the relationship once was quite similar to how intricate a hook and eye are because they are built with such finesse, detail, and connect when there are no flaws. The tenor of this poem is “into”, which starts to describe the vehicle, which is “hook into an eye”. Atwood uses the simile in a unique place, because it gives the reader a sense of what a unique and special relationship that the two people share, whether it be emotionally, physically, or both. Not only does the simile help leave an impression on the reader after reading the first stanza, but it could have not been placed anywhere else in the poem. If Atwood had reversed the order of the two stanzas the reader might not have even considered the hook and eye as being anything but a fish hook, which would have left the poem very little lenience to different interpretations. The rest of the poem interrogates and challenges the use of the simile by using some of the same comparisons with different objects, of harsher tones in the second stanza. After the first stanza is read, the reader knows that the author is talking about a relationship. Therefore, after the second stanza is read a reader could put the two stanzas together and start to understand that even though the relationship might have started really well, eventually one of the two people becomes caught in a cycle of pain and hurt. References: Atwood, Margaret. "You Fit Into Me." Literature: A Pocket Anthology Second Canadian Edition. Ed. Gwynn. R.S., Wanda, Campbell. 2nd ed. Toronto, ON: Pearson Longman, 2008. 635. Print.