Marge Piercy College Essays Samples For Students

In this essay we analyze the poem; secretary chant written by Marge Piercy (Meyer 744). Notably, Marge Piercy uses whimsical metaphor in the whole poem to make the audience understand that the worker is a woman who is in an occupation that makes her feel like a machine with just a single purpose in life. Marge Piercy has written this poem in a simple and lucid style that emphasizes playful bizarre; however, in some ways it uses depressing metaphors to depict how the secretary frequently feels dehumanized. Marge Piercy conjures up explicit mental image of a female character with no personal identity but lives ...

Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy Hunter

The theme of the poem “Barbie Doll” is the narrow definition of femininity in the 1970’s American society. The poem is written in a free verse style. The sound of the poem is more like that of a story. Since the writer is telling us, what is essentially, a modern fairy tale; the free verse style keeps the poem focused on the story of the girl child. This helps avoid any distraction, that would be created if the poet employed any sophisticated poetic devices.

The themes of the poem include (1) perception of girl/women in the 1970’s American society. (2) Appearances

The poem goes on to describe, how a girl child was expected to be ...

The twentieth century was a background for developing various movements. A splash of feministic ideas happened in 1970s that gave rise to feministic literature.
Marge Piercy is one of the most vivid representatives of the approach. Being a social activist she could not but highlighted a theme of inequality between men and women. Unhappy marriage and hardships of her adult life found their place in novels and poetry. ‘What’s that smell in the kitchen’ is one of the brightest examples of the challenge Piercy posed to the traditional way of American life.
Life of middle-class families, being the most ...

Beauty in American culture is stereotyped on certain physical attributes. Absence of these attributes on an individual condemns them as ugly. Marge Piercy in the poem “Barbie Doll” singles out a girl who in spite of possessing immense intelligence, health, strong arms and back, “abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity” was condemned as ugly because she had a “fat nose and thick legs”.
Height and specifically being tall is perceived as part of physical beauty and a lot of importance is attached to this. Marge Piercy in the poem “a work of Artifice” focuses on the diminutive bonsai tree. She terms it as “ ...