Siren Song by Margaret Atwood

The sea sirens are well known characters from the odyssey, and are mainly portrayed to be an “evil” character. However when looking at two different texts from two separate point of views, one may find that sirens are not so evil. One looks at the sirens from odysseus point of view while the other is from the sirens. In the first text odysseus is tying his men up so that would not be cursed by the ravishing singing. In the other the sirens are crying out helplessly.

Each one has different portrayals of the same character by using tone and point of view. In the first set of text from The Odyssey the story is told in the point of view of odysseus. He explains what he is doing and how he is protecting his crew members from the sirens. He says that he “stuffs the ears of my comrades one by one”, he does this to prevent his crew members from hearing the seductive and potentially deadly music the sirens produce, overall giving the text a strong willed tone.

The sirens are thought of as dangerous and/or evil in this text set. This is known because odysseus says that he kneaded wax in his “two strong hands” Which emphasized his strength and than is further on said to be needing tied up this means even the all mighty odysseus is not strong enough to defeat the sirens on his own. In the next set of text Siren Song by Margaret Atwood the sirens are seen in a new light. The point of view in this text is from the sirens herself. She shows she is helpless through quotes Sydney Mullen 2 like “ I don’t enjoy it here” and “ this song is a cry for help”. The sirens are not there to cause harm but they want to escape. Sailors ignore them thinking they will get hurt. There song is too powerful and they just want to escape the island but, sadly they are unable to do so. The tone of the passage can be both helpless and persuasive. The line “shall I tell you the secret?” could be taken as persuasive while the quote “ i don’t enjoy it here” could be seen as a more helpless tone.

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