Piercy's Use of Implied and Explicit Metaphors in "The Secretary Chant"
In this poem Marge Piercy's speaker evokes a concrete vision of a woman who has lost her personal identity to her job. Her bold and descriptive use of metaphors allow the reader to envision a woman who is living her life vicariously through her career. Ms. Piercy successfully uses paradox, personification, and the pun to bring the character alive. With the use of metaphors, both implied and explicit, the reader can deeply empathize with the central character of this poem. From the first line of the poem the tone is set for the reader. It is not so vague as to use a simple simile, but a strong manifestation of the idea of the speaker as an actual personification of a material object. She does not say "My hips are like a desk", she says "My hips are a desk" (line 1). Throughout the rest of the poem, personification of the woman as nothing more than a piece of office equipment is expressed with striking realism. In the first six lines of the poem the speaker describes herself in salient detail. Each of her body parts are placed with an obvious piece of office equipment. This allows the reader to form a solid picture of a woman
performed a vital function maintaining an office is now completely useless. Further examination of the personification of the secretary as a piece of office equipment is seen in the use of onomatopoeia as a metaphor. "Buzz. Click" (7) and "Zing. Tinkle" (14). With the use of these descriptive sounds the machines would traditionally make, the symbolism is more aptly expressed to the reader. She is clearly telling her boss where he would find the used paper and closed files but the pun intended is that whatever she tells her boss is ignored anyway. of metonymy, the secretary, now as a machine herself is "about to be delivered / of a baby Xerox machine" (18-20), thus perpetuating a species of human machines. In the final four lines, the secretary decries that "I wonce was a woman" and that she needs to be "filed under W". She is again giving instructions to her boss that she now serves no real function as a woman and should just be filed away and forgotten. In this way, Ms. Piercy develops the paradox in which a person who once was explaining how to operate any other piece of office equipment. Like any secretary she would have
Some common words found in the essay are:
Ms Piercy, Zing Tinkle, Marge Piercy's, piece office, office equipment, piece office equipment, ms piercy, secretary piece office, badly organized file, , secretary piece, badly organized, hips desk, woman filed, organized file,
Approximate Word count = 777
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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