This was written for my twelfth grade English class in response to the following poem by Marge Piercy. The poem, it's quite excellent. The interpretation, well...you judge. It was supposed to address at least two rhetorical devices in the poem. The assignment was given by a somewhat fascist instructor commonly known as The Amphibian, so take that into consideration.

     Symbolism and theme are two rhetorical devices evident in “A Work of Artiface”, by Marge Piercy, and they are they two that I will discuss in my interpretation of that poem. These two elements play a large part in getting the message of the poem across, and understanding them is essential to understanding the meaning of this poem.
     The central figure in the poem, the “main character”, is the bonsai tree; this is the image the author has used to symbolize what she is really writing about—people (more specifically, women) who alter themselves for the sake of beauty or men, and are not regarded as beautiful for what they really are, but for what the alterations have made them. The tree in the poem was “pruned” by the “crooning” gardener. The gardener represents society, or maybe man—the force that is causing wild free women to become “domestic and weak”. The gardener’s crooning shows that not only is he mutilating the tree, but he has no qualms about it, he feels no guilt. He’s humming self-righteously at his work, knowing that he is naturally superior to the tree, and he is carving a slave out of something that is free. The tree could have grown to be “eighty feet tall on the side of a mountain/till split by lightning”—woman can be assertive and independent in her element as well. The lightning symbolizes a natural end, a natural crippling, maybe a natural death. But the gardener is crippling the tree far before its prime, cutting short its life—and man is bringing an end to woman’s liberty and forcing her to be a domestic slave, merely an ornament instead of a landmark. Now the tree resides in an “attractive pot”—it has been taken from the wilderness it knows, weakened, watered down, and made “pretty”. He “whittles back the branches”, the branches being all the elements of a woman that make her independent, functional, beautiful—he takes them and one by one removes them until she is submissive and dependent. This indicates that the gardener—and generally, man—are afraid of plants (women) that they cannot tame, that they cannot put in their place. It also indicates that they feel that however spiritually beautiful a free, independent woman may be, there is nothing more beautiful superficially than a woman who has been made up by society’s standards. The twelfth through fourteenth lines of the poem read, “It is your nature/to be small and cozy/domestic and weak”. These lines illustrate the mindset of the society in question perfectly—the first two adjectives sound appealing, pretty, but the second two reveal what is meant by “small and cozy”—these lines together represent the double-talk used to make women into dolls. “With living creatures/one must begin very early/to dwarf their growth”—this represents how, earlier and earlier in life, girls are taught that this submission is what is meant for them. It also represents how it is necessary for society or man to begin training the woman early to think of herself as inadequate, so that there won’t be any time for her to think for herself, or for anyone to tell her that no change is needed, that she is wonderful the way she is. “The bound feet/the crippled brain/the hair in curlers/the hands you love to touch” read the last few lines of the poem. Women’s feet are bound—this symbolizes submission. “The crippled brain”—this symbolizes the idea that women, however much natural intellect they possess, must always acknowledge that the man is right, that his intellect is superior, that they must “learn” to be stupid. “The hair in curlers”—symbolic of the emphasis placed on superficial beauty. “The hands you love to touch”—represents the finished product, the fact that now a woman’s sense of self has been surrendered, it is all right to touch her and love her, she is now socially “adequate”.
     All of these symbols can be brought together and refined to form the theme of this poem—how people, most often women, are broken and discouraged and transformed to meet others’ standards, with no thought for their own standards or personality or feelings. The example of Chinese foot-binding ties in with this perfectly—there is no better example of alteration of a woman on every level of her life in order to change her from a functional citizen into a doll-like servant, a prize. Society, through many means (most notably the mass media), pushes its ideas of beauty and conformity and submission on women, and it hasn’t been until recently that women have been encouraged to do “manly” things such as balance motherhood and a career, further their education, play “manly” sports (witness the creation of the WNBA, women infiltrating a supposed man’s sport). The theme of “A Work of Artiface” reflects society’s demands for women, demands that they be pretty playthings and serve no purpose other than to serve tea and smile politely. The image of the “attractive pot” does well to illustrate the position women have been in up until recently—they can see the opportunities of career and education and athletics that men have (as well as the stereotypical “privileges” of manhood, such as being “allowed” to cheat in relationships, or making more money for doing the same job), yet have been kept in the attractive pot, in the home, keeping things nice for their husbands. It goes even further than this, and shows that not only are (were) women kept back, but they are also physically altered to ensure that there will be no thoughts of breaking free in the future—in short, to resign the woman to the stereotypical “mother and wife” role in society.
     With a clear, unmistakable theme illustrated by symbols representing definite parts of society and human nature that we can identify with, “A Work of Artiface”, by Marge Piercy, gets its point across well. There’s no mistaking the underlying mocking of those outdated symbols, either—the poem is more than a cynical criticism of an element of society, but an urging for women to overcome that element.