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Poem Analysis: The Chippewa Woman

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The Chippewa Woman portrays a native woman, alongside her sick baby, struggling through the harsh storm in search of food. Secluded and destitute, the woman fishes in the icy lake with her bare hook but to no avail. Consequently, the woman decides to take some of her own flesh to use as bait with which she manages to reel in some fish. With their hunger satisfied, they are faced with the daunting journey home when finally on the third day the woman is greeted with the familiar sights of her abode. This poem is approached with a narrative style and reads like a story from the point of view of the poet which starts off with the phrase ‘Once in the winter’ indicating the retelling of a story. The author uses a lot of descriptive words to fully absorb the reader and to give a vivid depiction of the story. For example, in the phrases, ‘crouched in the last hours’ and ‘frozen and hungry’, we see the distressing emotions that are being experienced by the woman and we get a sense of the urgency and fatality that is quickly approaching. …show more content…

The ‘hissing’ of the snow portrays the harsh power of the current conditions as if they were being spat out of the mouth of a vicious snake. As she dwells in the solidarity of the island, we see how the wind of the storm ‘roared like a fire’ which illustrates it as being an aggressive force with its own voice as if she could physically hear it speaking to her. These excellent choices of words add immensely to the ghastly and eerie nature of her

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