Poetry Analysis

In the poem Diving into the Wreck, Adrienne Rich addresses the issue of believing and accepting the truth over accepting the beliefs of the majority of society each of us live in. Rich does this by using the underwater scene of the wreck and the allusions to societal power. The mermaid wants evidence, she wants to know the true story of the wreck, “The thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth” (lines 61-63). She is ambitious and curious and goes against what her society believes and accepts to find evidence for herself. In the second stanza of the poem, Rich uses a ladder as a reference to society ideas and beliefs and the power it has over individuals. “There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging…we know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise, it is a piece of maritime floss, some sundry equipment.” (lines 13-21). These lines are inferring that there is always going to be the opinion from the majority. The opinion of the majority will always loom over our heads and it is our own decision to go along with the majority, or go along with our intuition and believe things based on what we need and want to believe. To find the truth, the mermaid has to escape from the safe society belief system and experiences how difficult the transition can end up being. Rich captures this transition in the lines. “I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me…I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin,” (lines 22-33). The mermaid experiences the hardships of going off on her own and expresses that she even feels pain. Once again Rich uses the ladder to allude to the mermaid’s society’s ideas and beliefs and provides a visualization of her moving the opposite direction of the society by describing her actions of crawling down the ladder as if she were an insect. At the end of the poem, Rich portrays why most of us prefer to stay and go along with the ideas and beliefs of our society and the majority. The question we are left with is whether it’s the right thing, or if it is the wrong thing; if it is an indicator of whether we are strong or weak. “We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage, the one who find our way back to this scene,” (lines 87-90). The “scene” in this case refers to truth, the reality of the stories we hear. The ones who escape the majority and go off to find the truth can either be perceived as being in the right or being in the wrong.