An analysis of Atwood’s “The Moment”

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

This is The Moment by Margaret Atwood, famed for her book The Handmaid’s Tale, and it is one of my all time favourite poems. With all the qualifications of my amateur brilliance, I will now try to analyze this wonderful work of writing.

To understand this poem, I first have a small activity that you, the reader, need to participate in. Read through the poem again, but this time with a specific breathing pattern. Stay with me, I know this is weird, but it helped me understand the voice of the narrator. Take a deep breath before starting, hold that breath for the first stanza, slowly exhale it for the second stanza, and while reading the third stanza take a quick breath in and out in an exasperated sigh. You’ve got your instructions cadet, I’ll see you on the other side.

So, that was weird. You’re probably wondering why I asked you to do that. There are two reasons for this little stint of breath control, firstly, to understand the structure of the poem. The first two stanzas are a single drawn out sentence, hence the held and slowly exhaled breath. The third stanza is a series of shorter, chopped up sentences. In other words, the poem is a drawn out thought, followed by a series of short, quick thoughts. Secondly, this activity helps to understand the emotions of the narrator. The speaker starts the poem being hopeful and positive, we’re here “after many years of hard work,” implying completion and success(l. 1-2). As it goes along however, they grow despondent, “No, they whisper. You own nothing” (l. 13). And at the end they become frustrated with the repetition of the scene, watching “time after time” as the land is claimed, ravaged, and destroyed (l.14).

To further understand this work, let’s analyze the language used in the stanzas. In the first, the narrator uses the term “long voyage” to imply a hopeful journey. It evokes a person standing on the prow of a ship looking to the future with joy. Thus, the narrator’s continued hope is established as the start of the poem. It also references claiming ownership of a “room, house, half acre, square mile, island, country” (l. 3-4). This pulls everyone into the story, many people living in many places claiming ownership over many things. Everyone is accused of the crime the poem will go on to describe. Everyone is guilty of ownership and destruction. But, on the flip side, anyone could make the first step to saving our planet.

The second stanza is an apocalypse told through the language of mourning. It is total ruin, but it’s a ruin that the narrator has seen before. When “the trees unloose their soft arms from around you” (l. 7-8) it feels almost soothing and comforting to read, despite being a statement of abandonment. As “The cliffs fissure and collapse” (l. 10), we are reminded of the ancient and unstoppable process that brought down the towering stumps of Ozymandias. The narrator has seen these things so often as to speak familiarly about them. Once again, they are resigned to this cycle of destruction.

Despite this somewhat melancholy language, this stanza does describe an apocalypse. The trees “unloosing their soft arms from around” us is deforestation and forest burnings (l. 7). “The cliffs fissur[ing] and collaps[ing]” are all of our great projects falling into rubble (1. 10). They’re our dams and skyscrapers and everything else that we bulldozed forests and fields to build. And “the air mov[ing] back from [us] in a wave” is our atmosphere growing ever more poisoned from the pollution we spew into the air.

The third stanza is a reminder of our crime and a declaration of absence, of the loss of the natural world. The statement “climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming” (l. 15) is an allusion to the conquering empires of history who discovered “new” land and announced their ownership despite the existing inhabitants. “No, they whisper, you own nothing” (l. 13) the narrator reminds us. I read that line as words disappearing on the wind, the blessings of the natural world being whisked away from humanity.

The narrator in The Moment is the spirit of the land, a figure whose hope is repeatedly crushed and who becomes resigned to watching a cycle of conquest and destruction. Despite that, they still believe that every person they watch may still rise up to help. The theme of The Moment is that, while we have strayed far from the path of environmental righteousness, we are not too far gone to reverse the damage. We can still undo the devastation we have wreaked on the planet, we just need to remember that it was never ours to begin with. For, from the perspective of the land we’ve claimed ownership of, it “never belonged to [us]/ [we] never found [them]./ it was always the other way around” (l. 16-18)