Margaret Eleanor Atwood

• Margaret Eleanor Atwood was born on 18 November 1939.
• She is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, inventor, teacher, and environmental activist.
• This Canadian writer is best known for her prose fiction and feminist perspective.
• Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario in Canada.
• She became an eager reader of literature in her early ages itself.
• Atwood started writing plays and poems at the age of six.
• She got graduation from Victoria College, University of Toronto and master’s degree from Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• When she became sixteen she has a desire to write professionally.
• In 1968, She married Jim Polk, an American writer and they divorced in 1973.
• She got numerous awards and honors like Man Booker Prize, Arthur C. Clarke Award, Governor General’s Award, Franz Kafka Prize, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards.
• She has received more than fifty five awards.
• Atwood is also the inventor and developer of the LongPen.
• The LongPenis a remote signing device conceived of by Margaret Atwood in 2004.It allows a person to remotely write in ink from anywhere in the world via tablet PC and the Internet and a robotic hand.
• Atwood is a founder of the “Griffin Poetry Prize” and “Writers’ Trust of Canada”.
• Atwood’s first book of poetry is “Double Persephone”, was published as a pamphlet in 1961.
• 1966 published “The Circle Game”got Governor General’s Award.
• Atwood’s first novel is “The Edible Woman”. It was published in 1969.
• Atwood’s literary reputation raised with the publication of “Bodily Harm”(1981); “The Handmaid’s Tale” (1985).
• Atwood also wrote short stories, collected in volumes as Dancing Girls(1977), Bluebeard’s Egg (1983), Wilderness Tips (1991), Moral Disorder (2006), and Stone Mattress (2014).
• Her nonfiction includes Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (2002), which grew out of a series of lectures she gave at the University of Cambridge.
• In addition to her writing contribution, Atwood taught English literature at several Canadian and American universities. 
• Atwood’s interest in female experience clearly reflected in her novels.
• Most of her fiction has been translated into several foreign languages.
• Feminists place Atwood at a higher position.
• Atwood has also penned down historical fiction. The first novel belonging to this category is Alias Grace (1996). 
• Starting with the publication of her first novel, The Edible Woman, Atwood asserted, “I don’t consider it feminism; I just consider it social realism.”
• Through her works many times she makes observations about the relationship of humans to animals.
• She has strong views on environmental issues.
• The magnificent craft of her work is discussed widely across Europe, U.S and in Canada.

This is a Photograph of Me

• “This is a Photograph of Me” is a poem written by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood.
• “This is a Photograph of Me” belongs to Atwood’s second collection of poems.
• This poem is written in the first person narrative.
• Poem begins with the title of the poem.
• The title of the poem is the crucial part of the poem.
• Title is important because it gives an understanding of the total poem.
• The title of the poem is in passive form of the sentence.
• Here the poet is directly make conversation with the readers.
• This poem is written in present tense.
• She says, this is a photo others have taken of me. 
• This is a history of me which others have created.
• She goes in detail by saying the others are males who are active to make history of females.
• When other makes history of female then there comes the problem of precision and accuracy. 
• The speaker shows the photograph and also explains how it should be viewed and interpreted.
• The poem shows us that photographs allow people to see things clearly, but speaker’s description of the photograph shows the limits of mere photographic realism.
• The main objects in the photo are an evergreen tree, a small house, and the lake.
• Here in the photograph the right hand side is a frame House which stands for male and left hand side is branches that stand for female.
• In that patriarchy, a woman is treated as left hand and man is treated as right hand.
• Through this it shows left hand is normally weaker than right hand. 
• By giving her left position she has been shown as passive and weak.
• Hills and lakes keep the woman in shadow.
• Atwood is trying to show house is not responsible for a woman’s plight.
• The speaker is there in the lake. She is not taken out of the lake. She has no identity.
• The photograph was takenthe day after she has drowned.
• In the final stanza of the poem there is a shift in tone. 
• Speaker says photograph of me is dim, its true but I am there. 
• The last line turns into revolutionary by saying despite all the discrimination I am there.
• According to the speaker they can destroy her photograph but cannot destroy her existence.
• The main theme of the poem is Appearance vs. Reality.
• Each person who views the photograph may see different things.
• Another theme of the poem is conflict between nature and man.
• The lake in the photograph signifies all the complexities of life.
• Here in this poem Atwood uses simple language and everyday images.
• She describes everything in straightforward manner.