Word Speculation on Adrienne Rich's “Diving into the Wreck”

Imagery:

“Body-armor of black rubber”

“absurd flippers”

“grave and awkward mask”

“oxygen...blue light...clear atoms”

“I crawl like an insect”

“air is blue... bluer then green... then black.”

“It pumps my blood with power”

“The drowned face always staring”

“Ribs of the disaster”

“Mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body”

“I am she: I am he”

“We are the half-destroyed instruments that once held course”

“Water eaten log... the fouled compass”

“Carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths”

Of the many images in Adrienne Rich's poem, “Diving into the Wreck,” the first ones to catch my eye came, unsurprisingly, in the first few lines. As Rich describes the Diver's equipment in the lines; “black-armor of black rubber”, “absurd flippers”, “grave and awkward mask”, I got the feeling that while the Diver is physically preparing to enter the wreck, he's sort of steeling himself for what he thinks will be a mentally trying challenge. This is further reinforced by the decent, as so described in the lines; “oxygen... blue light... clear atoms,” “I crawl like an insect down”, “air is blue... bluer then green... then black.” Although the Diver is just diving deeper, it's painted more as a decent into a kind of dead zone where the Diver himself is starting to feel like an intruder, hence him crawling like an “insect” and the water getting darker and darker until it's finally black. At this point the Diver also becomes keenly aware of the morbidity of the place he is entering as he almost faints and is saved only by his air mask as, “it pumps my blood with power.” Even though the descent is trying, though, the Diver soon reaches the Wreck itself, which appears to him as, “the drowned face always staring,” showing that he is giving life (or more specifically, death) to the Wreck. Furthermore, the line, “ribs of disaster,” continues the metaphor that at one time the ship itself was alive though now it's just another drowned carcass.

Perhaps on of the most eerie and macabre episode in the entire poem occurs when the Diver comes across a drowned women who is a, “mermaid whose dark hair streams black,” and he is, “the merman in his armored body.” What really caught my eye, though, was the line, “I am she: I am he,” where it seems as if the author is injecting herself into poem. Perhaps she is pondering what it would be like if she drowned in a sinking boat; would a Diver come looking for her? Maybe she's wondering if she will ever have a “drowned face [that] sleeps with open eyes,” or “breasts [that] still bear the stress.”

In any case, the poem seems to get a little wired after the interaction with the dead maiden as the Diver's reflections begin to expand to include us all in lines like, “we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held course.” However, at the end of the poem, the diver seems to come back to himself and remember that while he is indeed surrounded by death, lines like, “carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths” act as reminders that he is only a visitor and an observer. His ship, it seems, has not yet sunk.