Atwood Plog: The Sad Child

"Your sad because your sad. It's chemical." These are the words that the speaker uses that really sums up an important piece to this poem. This is because the poem is about a young lady that just experienced her first step into puberty becoming sad because she views herself as no longer a child and no longer under that protective shadow that her parents once cast over her. In the poem "A Sad Child" by Margaret Atwood, the speaker uses images of a bathroom and destruction, as well as diction to tell a story about a girl growing up. The speaker also comforts the girl and explains that every womyn before her has gone through the same situation before.

The structure of this poem is very interesting because there are five stanzas and all of them are the same length except for the third stanza. I believe that Atwood did this to physically show a build up and resolution to her piece. The first two stanzas are more general and describe sad childeren and that some move past it and others dwell on the sadness.

The third stanza is arguably the most important stanza in the poem because it explains and describes so much and can be interpreted in two different ways. The first way to interpret the story is literally and believing that a girl spilled ice cream on her new dress at a lawn party, and that she went into the bathroom to wash it out and starred into the mirror saying that she wasn't the favorite child to herself. That is the basic way to read the poem and, which ever way you decide to read the story, both come to around the same general idea.

The second way to interpret the story is that a girl is experiencing her first time of the month as she matures and moves in to that specific stage of puberty. Perhaps some of the blood gets on her dress and causes her to feel embarressed and no longer the favorite child because of the fact that she isn't a child and now considers herself an adult. The reasons why I came to this interpretation of the story was because of images and words used such as "age, chemical, flushed, bathroom, sulky, pill, and psychic."

Overall, which ever way the reader decides to interpret the story, the reader is still sad and the speaker is attempting to cheer up and explain why she is sad. Both stories make sense and I believe there is enough evidence for either interpretation. (I also really hope i get this poem for my oral)