Recognizing_Poetic_Parallels

Recognizing Poetic Parallels In today’s world, people are judged from head to toe. Whether it’s someone’s hair, their make-up, their nails, or the clothes that they wear, people will notice and there are a lot of people who will make rude comments and be mean about it. Marge Piercy explains in her poem, Barbie Doll, what many girls go through in the United States because of this judgmental society that we live in. She also explains it in her poem, A Work of Artifice. In the poem, Barbie Doll, Marge Piercy explains how sometimes what people say and think about us makes us do irrational things. The poem talks about a girl who is just like any other girl, with the exception that she is not so pretty. Piercy describes the girl in lines 7-11: “7She was healthy, tested intelligent, 8possessed strong arms and back, 9abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity. 10She went to and fro apologizing. 11Everyone say a fat nose on thick legs”. Lines 7-11 show that even though she is a healthy, smart, strong girl, all that people care is that she is overweight and that her nose is not thin. People made her watch what she ate and exercise as Piercy mentions on line 14, “13exhorted to come on hearty, 14exercise, diet, smile and wheedle”. The fact that people were trying to change who she is to make her something that she is not, killed her inner nature. “15Her good nature wore out 16like a fan belt” is the way that Marge Piercy described how this girl’s personality and nature fell to the ground as people kept trying to change who she really was in order to make her more “acceptable” in society. After the girl was tired of being manipulated, humiliated, and hurt she decided to do something irrational. Marge Piercy explains this in lines 17 and 18, “17So she cut off her nose and her legs 18and offered them up.” By these lines we can imply that the hate, the humiliations, the judging, the manipulation, and the rudeness that this girl went through turned her to suicide. After all that she went through, she achieved what she for so long wished for, for people to think that she was pretty. Line 23 says that everyone said that she was so pretty in her funeral. It is sad that someone has to kill themselves in order for people to respect them and think that they look pretty. Line 25 says how she ended, “25To every woman a happy ending.” But was she actually happy after killing herself to find acceptance from other people' Piercy states a similar meaning in her poem A Work of Artifice. Just like the smart, strong, healthy girl from Barbie Doll, a tree that is meant to grow eighty feet tall and live for hundreds of years is shortened both in looks and life in order for people to find it attractive in A Work of Artifice. As the gardener takes care of it to make sure that he stays little and attractive he tells the tree “12It is your nature 13to be small and cozy, 14domestic and weak; 15how lucky, little tree, 16to have a pot to grow in.” Instead of this tree growing in the wild, growing its full length, bigger than a building, being used for bird nests and be the home of other animals, “8it is nine inches high” and it will never be a grown tree, it will never grow freely. Instead, this poor tree will have a little pot, it will be pruned constantly and grow no more than a foot high. This tree also spends a life of condemnation in order for people to find it attractive. As a conclusion, it can be stated that being a female in the United States is not easy. Judgmental people are everywhere and there is always someone that will be there to make you feel insecure about yourself and feel bad about yourself. In Barbie Doll Piercy shows how girls, especially when they hit puberty and are in school go through the hardest times. There are so many changes and that’s when children start noticing the opposite sex. Being a woman is already hard, but going through puberty with people making fun of you and making you feel bad makes it even worse. She also proved in A Work of Artifice that people try to shape children into their own image of what they want them to be as said in lines 17 through 19; “17With living creatures 18one must begin very early 19to dwarf their growth”. People need to learn that they need to let children grow, figure out their own likes and dislikes and we cannot always shape them into a smaller version of ourselves, we have to let them grow into their own shoes.