22 pages • 44 minutes read
Margaret AtwoodThe Circle Game
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1964A 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 and Meter
The poem is free-verse, meaning it has no consistent rhyme or meter, which reflects the uncertainty of the poem’s characters. Moreover, while the form is a division into seven sections with stanzas, those stanzas are irregular. Some have only one line and others have six lines, and some lines only have one word. Many of the lines feature enjambment with complete thoughts carrying from line to line and even from stanza to stanza. To top it off, the number of sections, seven, is an uneven number—a prime number, in fact—that defies clean division by any number other than itself (and one). Nevertheless, the number seven (much like a circle itself) has traditionally and mythologically represented perfection and completion.
Moreover, there is further unity in the poem, though it unfolds only gradually. While the poem’s seven sections at first seem disconnected and mysterious, they slowly tie together to reveal a unity, especially in the final section, where the children’s and adults’ storylines come together.
Similes
Atwood uses several similes, or comparisons with “like” or “as,” to inject imagery into the poem. In section ii, the speaker says to their partner,
Being with you
here, in this room
is like groping through a mirror
whose glass has melted
to the consistency
of gelatin (Lines 37-42).
This simile, which evokes the imagery of a mirror, compares the speaker’s connection with their partner to something that is not completely solid. Gelatin may even conjure up gustatory associations. The poem continues its mirror imagery and explores the concept of reflection throughout the section, but this simile establishes the nature and degree to which reflection is possible when it is the consistency of gelatin. In section iv, Atwood utilizes a simile that brings forth two more symbols that at first seem unrelated: “So now you trace me / like a country’s boundary / or a strange new wrinkle” (Lines 147-149). A boundary and a wrinkle evoke different meanings and visuals, but both can have lines that are uneven or hard to find. As with the previous simile, this comparison shows the relationship between the two adults to be intimate but also uncertain.
Repetition
Atwood uses repetition to reinforce ideas and also to establish mood. At the end of section ii, the speaker says that “there is someone in the next room” (Line 67) and again that “there is always / […] / someone in the next room (Lines 68-71). The repetition of the phrase along with the addition of “always” evoke an ominous mood. No matter what, there is always going to be an intruder or a distraction to come between the couple. The repetition also evokes sensations in the reader. In section i, Atwood repeats, “round and round” (Lines 3, 25, 33, 36), which can have a dizzying effect on the children playing but also on the readers envisioning the playing. The alliteration of the “r” sound is played out in the repetition, almost like the whirring of a machine that operates automatically without thinking or caring about the process, as seems to be the case with the children’s games. In fact, this lack of enjoyment becomes a repeated expression of warning—once at the beginning and then again at the end of the poem: “but there is no joy in it” (Lines 22, 259).
Parentheticals
Among the poem’s most idiosyncratic stylistic features is Atwood’s use of parentheticals to add extra commentary to certain ideas. An example of this usage is in stanza i when the speaker describes the nature that is neglected when the children focus only on their playing
studious
(the grass
underfoot ignored, the trees
circling the lawn
ignored, the lake ignored (Lines 27-30).
A reader can comprehend the poem without the parentheticals, getting the sense that the children are intent on their playing, but the parentheticals add in an environmental theme and commentary about the intense focus leading to a neglect of engaging with nature. Additionally, as the parentheticals represent a deeper, more private level of the speaker’s perceptions of the world, they add a sense of interiority and psychological intimacy to the poem.
Related Titles
By Margaret Atwood
