“the Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window”
What would you do if you were given what you thought was the perfect life and it suddenly seemed to turn upside-down? Would you jump to your death or climb back up? “The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window” by Joy Harjo is a poem about a women who is lost in this big world we live in and trying to find herself while hanging from a thirteenth floor window. While this woman is hanging there she starts to have flashbacks about her life starting from her childhood up until now. The author goes into detail about why this woman is thinking about killing herself because of all the pressures of trying to be some she is not is catching up to her. This poem represents everyday people and how they first have to overcome themselves and their lives before they can truly move on. This poem is about a woman not trying to commit suicide but women who represent bigger picture. The woman represents anyone and everyone who has ever had problems piled up on them, the author uses ethos, pathos and logos to persuade how our social roles constrains who we are as people and because of this the women is hanging by a short thread trying to find herself and put all the piece to the puzzle of her life back together again.
This woman hanging from the thirteenth floor is in Chicago, living in an Indian part of the city. “She sees Lake Michigan lapping at the shores of herself. It is a dizzy hole of water and the rich live in tall glass houses at the edge of it” (Harjo 311). The quote describes how the woman is so frustrated with her like that she takes something so beautiful like Lake Michigan and she turns it into everything she despises. This is a woman not just hanging from the thirteenth floor window, but also from a thread. She is a woman with many responsibilities, she is a mother to three kids, was a wife to the two husbands she has had and a daughter to her parents. This poem is about a woman who is always being stretched between two different people, she fills the
This woman hanging from the thirteenth floor is in Chicago, living in an Indian part of the city. “She sees Lake Michigan lapping at the shores of herself. It is a dizzy hole of water and the rich live in tall glass houses at the edge of it” (Harjo 311). The quote describes how the woman is so frustrated with her like that she takes something so beautiful like Lake Michigan and she turns it into everything she despises. This is a woman not just hanging from the thirteenth floor window, but also from a thread. She is a woman with many responsibilities, she is a mother to three kids, was a wife to the two husbands she has had and a daughter to her parents. This poem is about a woman who is always being stretched between two different people, she fills the
Cited: Harjo, Joy. “The Woman Hanging From the 13th Floor Window”. Pearson Custom, NJ: Needham Heights, 2003. 310-312.