Margaret Atwood

Of the three poets, I am most like with Margaret Atwood. She is not only an incredible poet and a writer, but she also is feminist and political activist. I’ve long been very much interested in Women’s Studies after reading the Incidents during my freshman year. The book encloses several writings of American and Canadian anthropologists around the world and there were a number of writings on women’s role in different cultures. For instance, MyungHye Kim, an anthropologist, writes “When she [Korean women] has to leave home for a day or two for a personal reason, she does so in an apologetic way and she is expected to prepare meals for the rest of the family, arrange help with childcare, make the house tidy and so forth, so that her absence would not cause any inconvenience for the rest of the family.” This fact is true in Korean culture. The perspective of women’s role being just as a homemaker is changing nowadays in Korea, but there still exists conservative atmosphere among the culture that results in the conception that preparing meals and looking after family are women’s duties.



I am not a political activist, but I am interested in politics. Every morning, I read newspapers while eating breakfast and reading politics section became essential part of my morning. I also enjoy the political satiric cartoons. At first, they were hard to understand but as I started to get the gist of them, it makes me grin.



Moreover, Margaret Atwood wrote many works based on the theme of “loneliness”. It seems that she has been through some period of seclusion and underwent loneliness at some point in her life. I was able to connect with her feelings because I was once isolated from the world when I was recuperating from my injury in ICU (Intensive Care Unit) in hospital for over three months. Visitors were hard to make appointments and even if they did arrange an appointment, they were only allowed to be in for thirty minutes (either 10 to 10:30 a.m. or 5 to 6:30 p.m.). Of these personality traits and issues of my interest, I recognize myself the most with Margaret Atwood.