19 pages • 38 minutes read
Margaret AtwoodA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The bathtub full of bullets symbolizes the celebration of violence and excess in popular culture, particularly in depictions of the Old West. The bathtub is a symbol of luxury in popular culture, both in terms of time and comfort. Soaking in a bathtub filled with hot water implies one has access to ample space and leisure. In terms of resources, bathtubs are a wasteful way to take a bath since they use up far more water than a shower. Atwood takes this symbol of luxury, comfort, and waste and fuses it with bullets, which are emblematic of violence. She evokes the absurd image of a bathtub brimming with bullets, amplifying the idea of wasteful, gratuitous violence. The metaphor also satirizes Hollywood depictions of gun fights, in which bullets fly around meaninglessly.
The bullet-filled-bathtub is described as “innocent” (Line 7) and identified with the cowboy. This invokes an irony and a contradiction, because bullets are not innocent in the sense that they are capable of violence. The word innocent here implies obliviousness and thoughtlessness; the romanticization of violence is “innocent” because it glosses over the effects of the casualties, both literal and figurative.
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