19 pages • 38 minutes read
Margaret AtwoodBackdrop Addresses Cowboy
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1974A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form, Meter, and Alliteration
This contemporary poem does not follow a regular rhyme or metrical structure. It’s written in free verse, with short, enjambed lines. Sometimes the enjambments occur mid-word, as in the case of “almost-/ silly West” (Lines 2-3), where the compound word “almost-silly” is broken up at the end of the first line. The poem’s stanzaic lengths vary; from six-line-long stanzas to a single-line stanza. In addition, the lines are of varying lengths too, though tend to be short in general. The overall effect of this line and stanza arrangement is a choppy, jagged rhythm which gives the poem an edge. As lines are often enjambed, thoughts flow into each other over successive lines, lending the speaker’s voice urgency. The impression the stanzaic structure creates is that the speaker has something important to say, so much so that their thoughts race ahead of them. While the longer stanzas are more lyric in tone, building up metaphors and images (“Starspangled cowboy/ sauntering out of the/ almost silly West …” ; Lines 1-6, first stanza), the shortest stanzas have a direct or critical tone (“Then what about me”; Line 25).
Atwood uses many instances of alliteration to add rhythm and meaning to the poem. The first stanza, for instance, contains the repeated “s” sound: “Starspangled cowboy/ sauntering out of the/ almost silly West/ on your face/ a porcelain grin” (Lines 1-5). The repeated sound makes the lines catchy and memorable, and also draws attention to the deep irony of the image of the star-studded cowboy walking out almost as if in a theatre. In addition to alliteration, where words close together begin with a similar sound, the lines above are also an example of consonance, where the consonant sound of “s” is repeated even in the middle of words (almost, west, porcelain). Phrases like “bathtub/ full of bullets” (Lines 7-8) and “beer bottles” (line 16) are other examples of alliteration in the poem.
Paradox and Irony
The poem satirizes the American value of “manifest destiny,” the old notion that the United States was destined to spread democracy and capitalism throughout North America. Though literary devices such as paradox, juxtaposition, and irony, Atwood implies that “manifest destiny” was actually code for colonialism, land-grab, and environmental damage. The first stanza undoes the mythic image of the heroic cowboy through satire: the cowboy’s grin is artificial (“porcelain grin” Line 4) and his dream of the grand American west is “almost-/silly” (Lines 2-3). In the second stanza, the poet uses a paradox to underline the cowboy’s hypocrisy, since he is “innocent as a bathtub/ full of bullets” (Lines 9-10). The paradox here is that bullets are not innocent in the least, the paradoxical depiction serves only to emphasize the cowboy’s utter lack of innocence. Other instances of paradox are “heroic/ trail of desolation” (Lines 16-17); desolation described as “heroic” is paradoxical.
Atwood expresses irony through juxtaposing the cowboy’s perceived heroism with its phony reality. The cowboy tugs a cactus, but the irony is this is a papier mâché dummy set on wheels. It is alluded people admire the cowboy, but ironically from behind a “cardboard storefront” (Line 21), which means the admiration is an act. The cowboy’s trail of destruction includes not great, terrible villains, but beer bottles, bird-skulls, and tincans. The irony is that the cowboy’s heroism is anything but heroic.
Metaphor and Personification
With the poem being an address from a backdrop to the cowboy, personification is an important figure of speech. The backdrop – symbolizing the land and people affected by colonialism and greed – is personified, referring to itself as “I” in the last third of the poem. From this point, the personification becomes even more concrete, with the backdrop stating “I ought to be watching/ from behind a cliff or a cardboard storefront/ when the shooting starts, hands clasped/ in admiration” (Lines 20-23). The phrase “hands clasped” (Line 22) evoke the image of the backdrop as an admiring human, possibly a woman. The personified backdrop now stands for all the people sidelined by imperialistic and male-centered ideas of development and progress. Other instances of personification include the phrase “beer bottles/ slaughtered” (Lines 16-17), with the inanimate bottles slaughtered as if they were people or animals. The beer bottles symbolize the living beings damaged by the cowboy. Through personifying objects and spaces in the poem, Atwood builds on the idea that in its pristine state, the landscape and its people are interlinked and whole. Indigenous people possibly regard their natural landscape as possessing life. Imperialism and capitalism do not respect this sacred union between a people and their land.
Atwood uses many powerful metaphors and similes through the poem to reference Hollywood cliches and undo them. “Porcelain grin” (Line 4) is an implicit comparison to a doll or a sculpture. Thus, the cowboy’s smile is fixed, mechanical, and fake. Lines 7-8 contain the simile where the cowboy is explicitly compared to a “bathtub/ full of bullets.” The conceit here is that the cowboy’s actions cause excessive, unnecessary damage, much like bullets spewing glamorously in a Hollywood movie. Another metaphor occurs in Line 13, when the air in front of the cowboy “blossoms with targets”. The air blooms flowers, except the flowers are targets, or bodies. The metaphor also evokes the image of blood bursting or blooming like a flower, underlining the destruction caused by the cowboy.
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By Margaret Atwood
