Ghost of a Chance Analysis

The title in this poem provides an understanding of Adrienne Rich’s Ghost of a Chance by metonymically linking to the deeper meaning of one’s struggle through life. The connotation in the title supports the poet’s desire to relate a different approach of thinking to the figurative language Rich uses throughout the poem. The poem starts out by Rich introducing “You see a man / trying to think” (1-2) to give an introductory statement of what the poem is truly about. The significance of this line suggests an individual’s desire to think differently in society and the figurative language throughout the poem promotes the profound meaning Rich tries to imply. The overall simile in “the old consolations / will get him at last / like a fish / half-dead from flopping / and almost crawling / across the shingle” (8-13) connotatively and metonymically suggests the enlightened individual to succumb to the “wave pull[ing] it back blind into the triumphant sea” (16-18), which shows how someone who begins to think differently, or considered a rebel as suggested by the connotation in “the old consolations / will get him at last” (8-9), will be forced back into one’s original thinking. The fact that the “wave pulls it back blind into the triumphant sea” compares to the fact that the “fish / half-dead from flopping / and almost crawling across the shingle” is representative of the struggle of one who does not fit into the norm, which is represented by “almost breathing” (15) through Rich’s use of figurative language. Overall, the poet figuratively describes one’s internal struggle by metonymically implying a deeper meaning of enlightened thinking and its effects on an individual.