Victimization: A Comparative Analysis of "Power Politics" by Margaret Atwood and "The Collected Works of Billy the Kid" by Michael Ondaatje

Power Politics seems to me to be a very good example of Margaret Atwood’s victimization theory. These poems were first published in 1971 and so, they fit the temporal basis from which Atwood took the examples for her studies: “from the thirties to the early seventies”(34).

These poems are about a relationship between a man and a woman. This woman is the I-narrator and let the reader take part in her thoughts and feelings. The normal struggle of the sexes escalates to a power struggle - the so-called Power Politics.

In think, in these poems a woman is described who fights for survival - not for the ‘bare’, but her emotional survival: “Surviving is the only war we can afford”(38). She doesn’t feel very well in her relationship to her husband and she knows that there is no chance of having a good life if there won’t change anything.

In my opinion, the woman is a typical example for Atwood’s victim theory. Basically, she typifies position three of the Basic Victim Positions. I come to this assumption because this woman knows and accepts that she is a victim. For example, she says: “Nothing remembers you but the bruises on my thighs and the inside of my skull”(13). I think, here she admits her role as a victim in an indirect way. She tells the reader that her husband(?) injured her - both physically and mentally. She also calls him an “Imperialist”(15), which means to me that he wants to have, or has already, power (above her?). If somebody has power above another human, this human is a victim in any way. So, here she admits for the second time that she is a victim.

On page 18 it is said that she waits for news of him which does not come. Here, she takes up a passive role in her relationship with her husband, which is more or less typical for victims. Furthermore, it is significant for position three in Survival that it “is a dynamic position, rather than a static one; from it you can move on to Position Four, but if you become locked into your anger and fail to change your situation, you might well find yourself back in Position Two ”(38).

I think, this quotation from Atwood’s in-depth study has to be made because it’s the basic idea in showing the main character in Power Politics as a victim. During the different poems the woman argues with herself about her situation and about the possibilities how it might go on. You can say that she vacillates between Position Two and Position Four. For example, she says: ”You take my hand and I’m suddenly in a bad movie, …,” and later, “Have to face it I’m finally an addict”(3). Here it is shown that she is unhappy by the way he treats her and admits being a victim in that way. The other point is that she says she is an addict. An addict

3

is a person who is unable to stop taking harmful drugs. In my opinion, saying to be an addict is a good way for some people to pin the blame on something other, in this case on an addiction. So, the woman can say that she isn’t able to do anything about her situation because she is addicted. Through this behaviour and thinking one can say that she finds herself in Position Two, where it is said: ”You can neither be blamed for your position nor be expected to do anything about it”(37). Again and again she takes up the passive role and wants someone else (her husband) to make her feel better and to change her bad situa tion: “How long do you expect me to wait”(32), “Help me what I want from you is …”(40) or “The pieces of me shine briefly in your empty hands”(42). These phrases show that she doesn’t have the power or the courage to change anything by herself.

On the other hand, she thinks also about doing something about her situation. One can see several attempts to consider the matter closed and to finish the cruel relationship with her husband - also if only in her thoughts: “I’m through, I won’t make any more flowers for you”(33) or “Now you have one enemy instead of many”(43). The last quotation is about the fact that she helped him but only because so he gets addicted by her. Here she does something active to get out of her role as a victim. One can say that she seems to be in Position Four, and she gives up being a victim.

Unfortunately, these are really only attempts. In the same moment as she thinks about how it would be to do something active about her situation, she immediately thinks about the possible bad consequences. So, it isn’t possible for her to make a change: “I say, leave me alone … You will not listen to resistance, you cover me with flags, a dark red season, you delete from me all other colours”(49). Here it is shown most clearly that how she tries (if only in her thoughts) to get away from him. She thinks that it wouldn’t have any sense to try because her husband wouldn’t take it serious, so that in the end she starts an attempt which wouldn’t change her situation anyway. In my opinion, this woman doesn’t have the necessary strength or even the will to do something. She tells herself that it wouldn’t make any sense, so that she doesn’t have to act. Her arguments have the function to excuse her from changing anything by herself.

On page four the ‘jumping’ between the different victim positions is shown in only one poem: She considers evading him:

“I can change myself more easily than I can change you, I could grow bark and become a shrub or switch back in time to the women image left in cave

4