This is a Photograph of Me by Margaret Atwood 

After reading this poem a lot of times, I decided that the body in the lake is not a real dead body. On my first reading, I thought this poem was about --an old photograph because of the word choices like “smeared, blurred, grey flecks…” and the speaker just described the environment like there is a tree, a small house, a lake, low hills and the dead body in the lake can be seen if you look carefully—but after that first impression of mine, I wanted to add some feelings when I read it, and the first one was sadness and maybe being in a depressed mood because of the dead body imagery and Atwood’s word choices. So I thought about the times I had been depressed or just feeling sad and powerless and I connected those feelings with the words from the poem and tried to understand the speaker -if the persona feels the same way with me-. It starts with “It was taken some time ago.”, a description of the piece of photograph, but for me, it shows the speaker’s mental condition, and when someone looks at that speaker (I will call her a -she-), the first thing seen is how exhausted she was because that photograph is an old and blurred one. However, she is no longer depressed, it was some time ago but the scars are still there which is why the photograph looks like a smeared print. Now nature comes, the trees, lake, and hills, those can be the positive things in her life because they are beautiful but I am not talking about the real lake or hills, they might be a person, maybe her family, friends, lover, but that does not change anything because people cannot stop you feeling down just because they exist. On the other hand, I thought what if I read that part from a feminist point of view, maybe those natural things -hills, lake- are not beautiful, the lake could be disgusting and full of garbage, and the lake which I mean maybe “male oppression," imprisoning her and letting her feel depressed and die at the end. But that was just an idea of mine, I am closer to thinking about that poem as a speaker talks about the old times, there were beautiful things or people in her life, but she had mental problems and left herself in a depressed mood – because that was the feeling I felt a long time ago-. At the end of the poem she says, "But if you look long enough, eventually you will be able to see me.” So here, I am asking, What is the point of seeing you? If we consider this poem as the way I interpret it, you are talking to someone, telling her or him all the things that you went through. You partly survive at the end because you are alive, but maybe some things are now dead inside you, and if someone looks long enough, one will be able to see you—maybe the “you” before the bad feelings you have. So again, what is the point of seeing you? I have some answers to that question; it might be a way of seeking help to bring back the old happy you, or it might be a search for empathy. You are not showing this photograph out of nowhere; maybe you are looking for someone who can understand why you are in that lake. So, this is a good thing, showing your pain or scars. It takes courage to show them and leave that lake too, and for me in that poem, the speaker survives in a way; even the title says, "This is a Photograph of Me.”.