The classical hero who rises in the ranks, dominates the fields of war, and claims the seas for his own is frequently assessed—if not destroyed—by the lure of beauty: “It was Beauty killed the beast,” says capitalist film director Carl Denham in King Kong (1933). Beauty is a ruse—a dangerous distraction from practical, profitable pursuits like war and conquest. It is the animal that responds to beauty—not the thinking man—and the animal is not to be trusted in a culture which values the constructed environment over the organic. Why then, if these men are so smart, do they persist in leaping “overboard in squadrons / even though they see the beached skulls” (Lines 5-6) of their predecessors?

With the exception of Homer’s Odysseus (who, aware of the danger, made his crew tie him to the mast and stuff their own ears with wax), every mariner who leaves himself vulnerable to the siren song makes the mistake of thinking he will be the one to be different. Call it ego, call it hubris but each doomed seaman—despite concrete sensory evidence to the contrary—despite knowing the fate of every man that went before him, believes he is strong enough not only to survive, but in the case of Margaret Atwood’s poem, to be the hero who saves the helpless creature.