Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” primarily uses the image of a diver diving into the ocean and exploring a wreck. Her journey begins with a “book of myths” that the speaker goes on the “dive’” to explore and uncover the truth, which recurs throughout the poem. The “black rubber flippers”, “diving mask" used to cover herself as she dives deep, are also recurring images, which propel her in her journey. The air color is another image, as it changes from blue to black, yet it is a more subtle image. A final image is one of the wreckage itself and its "fouled compass" and "water-eaten log".
Upon researching Rich’s background, I found that she was a strong feminist, which hints that the poem could possibly be based on the feminist movement. One major image throughout the poem indicating such is the wreckage which the diver journeys to seeking truth. I believe the wreckage represents feminism, which the speaker must uncover to find for herself, and see what went wrong in the past, so she can recover her feminism. Inside the wreckage, the “fouled compass” represents her loss of direction in life without her identity , and the “half-destroyed instruments” represent her current lost state in life.
The color of the air is another major image. First the water is a blue, and then it turns to green, and finally a deathly black. The color begins as blue to represent health, but then transitions to green to portray a sense of sickliness, as the writer begins to lose her identity . Finally, the air turns black, symbolizing the speaker’s feeling that she has lost her struggle with finding her identity. Yet after she blacks out, she is saved by her mask, which drives her to continue on further on her journey. This image seems to represent the struggle, and the need for a rebirth of a new kind of feminism.
Another prominent image is of the speaker meeting the mermaid and merman at the wreckage site. As she meets the man and woman she joins hands with them bridging the gap between the sexes. The speaker says “I am she: I am he”, symbolizing her confusion and androgyny. She has seemingly lost her identity as a woman. From these images, I can interpret that poem is pointed towards the need for women to retrieve their feminist identity.
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