Diving into the Wreck

Over the course of the poem, Rich utilizes simile and metaphor to emphasize the power, vulnerability, and possibility of her speaker’s experience. She begins by using a metaphor to describe the preparations for the dive, calling the scuba suit “the body-armor of black rubber” (Line 5), equating her task with entering battle. This comparison highlights the danger of the dive, literally and metaphorically, and draws attention to the vulnerable position she is in. Later, the speaker describes how she crawls “like an insect down the ladder” (Line 30), stressing her need to alter herself in order to enter the new world of the ocean. Her exploratory task requires that she open herself to something new, which requires a certain degree of discomfort and transformation.

In the latter third of the poem, the speaker metaphorically inhabits both genders as she faces the underwater wreck: “I am she: I am he / whose drowned ace sleeps with open eyes / whose breasts still bear the stress” (Lines 77-79). Facing the weight of patriarchal oppression, Rich’s speaker does not automatically reject the male gender but embraces it alongside the female, creating a unified person who has the capacity to see the wreck as the “thing itself and not the myth” (Line 63).