Adrienne Rich’s intricate poem “Diving into the Wreck” tackles gender, power, and self-discovery. The wreck in the poem represents a shattered patriarchal society that needs to be probed to reveal the past. The wreck’s “broken bottles, outdated sextants, and maps” depict a male-dominated, destructive civilization. The poem’s “book of myths” represents generations of stories and myths that have moulded our worldview. The speaker brings the book to study the wreck, suggesting she wants to confront prior beliefs and stories (Rich, 1973). The work’s diving gear symbolizes the tools needed to study the wreck and find the truth. The river represents the speaker’s unconscious, which she must explore to find her truth. The wreck and its exploration represent the speaker’s life.
The terminology used to describe the catastrophe, such as “the wreck and not the narrative of the wreck,” which implies that there is more to the accident than meets the eye, is one of the features of the poem that supports this interpretation of the ship as a metaphor of patriarchal society. This view is further supported by the speaker’s description of the wreck as “a book of myths” that she is attempting to understand (Rich, 1973). A sign of the collective history and tales of the culture the speaker lives in may be seen in the “book of myths” itself. When the speaker expresses a wish to “read the hieroglyphics of my skin,” it is likely that she is attempting to comprehend her own position within this civilization and to make sense of her personal experiences in light of its greater story.
Reference
Rich, A. (1973). Diving into the Wreck. In Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 (pp. 3-7). WW Norton & Company.