“The Moment” Introduction

• "The Moment" is Margaret Atwood's exploration of human arrogance and the power of nature. The poem's narrator observes that the very "moment" that a human being looks around at the world and says, "I own this," they ironically lose their relationship to the way things really are. Trying to pretend that one can possess the natural world, the poem suggests, only alienates one from a big truth: humanity is just a "visitor" on the planet, not its owner. Atwood first collected this poem in her 1995 book Morning in the Burned House.

• Read the full text of “The Moment”

“The Moment” Summary

• The instant that—after you've worked hard for years and traveled far—you stand right in the middle of your room, your house, your land, your country, understanding what brought you there and declaring that you own it all—

  This is the same instant in which the trees release you from their embrace, the birds stop speaking to you, the cliffs crack and crumble, the air pulls away, and you can't breathe.

  All of these things whisper to you that you don't actually own anything. They tell you that you were in fact just a guest here, even as you climbed hills, marked them with your flags, and declared that they belonged to you. They tell you that they were never your possessions, and you never discovered them: in fact, just the opposite is true.

“The Moment” Themes

• 

  Humanity's Arrogance and Nature's Strength

  In “The Moment,” Margaret Atwood paints a picture of humanity’s often delusional and arrogant attitude toward the natural world. By foolishly believing that they can lay claim to their own little piece of the planet, the poem suggests, human beings ironically alienate themselves from the deeper reality of being a part of nature: a brief “visitor” to the world, not its master.

  The poem depicts an everyperson figure (whom Atwood’s speaker addresses in the second person as “you”) in a moment of what at first seems to be triumph. After “years / of hard work and a long voyage,” this figure feels that they’re standing in the middle of their own little world, the exact “centre of [their] room, / house, half-acre, square mile, island, country.” Satisfied with this feeling that they’re at the heart of things, a powerful figure in a landscape they have mastered, they declare: “I own this.”

  And this, Atwood’s narrator says, is ironically the exact “moment” when this person is least in touch with the world around them. Through images of nature drawing back from this person—trees dropping them from their “soft arms,” the air itself pulling away “like a wave”—the poem suggests that humanity’s attempts to claim nature for themselves only alienate them from feeling like part of that world. Arrogantly declaring ownership means that they stand alone, disconnected from the rhythms of life around them. The poem drives that point home with a closing image of nature itself whispering a lesson to the arrogant central figure: “We never belonged to you. / You never found us. / It was always the other way round.”

  Where this theme appears in the poem:

  • Lines 1-18

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Moment”

• Lines 1-6

  The moment when, ...
  ... ,

  In the first stanza, readers might get the sense that the "moment" of this poem's title will be one of triumph. The poem begins with a description of what happens when a central figure has reached some great achievement "after many years / of hard work and a long voyage." The speaker—a narrator, looking on—addresses this figure in the second person as "you," suggesting that they're describing something that might happen to any "you," any reader who happens across the poem.

  When one's long, hard metaphorical (or literal!) journey is complete, the speaker goes on, one might feel quite important and powerful. They point this out through a pair of lines in which they grandly unfold a lot of space:

  you stand in the centre of your room,
  house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,

  Space expands out around one key point here: the place where the "you" stands. No matter how big the space, these lines suggest, the central figure here feels—well, like a central figure. The "room, house, half-acre," and so on seem to revolve around them: they feel as if they stand at the precise "centre" of all this terrain, the most important character in the landscape.

  Standing there, basking in their achievement, this central figure has a moment of hubris (or destructive pride). "Knowing at last" how they have come to this important, hard-won point in their life, they say three fatal words: "I own this." The folly of this declaration of ownership will become the subject of the poem.

  Atwood will unfold her reflection on humanity's arrogance and nature's power in three sestets (or six-line stanzas) of thoughtful free verse, without a regular rhyme scheme or meter. The balanced, steady shape of these stanzas will help to suggest a power far greater than that of the arrogant "you."

• Lines 7-12

  is the same ...
  ... you can't breathe.

  

  

• Lines 13-18

  No, ...
  ... other way round.

  

  

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“The Moment” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Parallelism

  Parallelism helps to give the poem a solid, unflappable tone, evoking nature’s calm power and certainty in the face of human arrogance. When the poem’s speaker describes how nature reacts to human beings trying to lay claim to territory, for instance, they use a repeated sentence structure that puts nature’s active power front and center:

  […] the trees unloose
  their soft arms from around you,
  the birds take back their language,
  the cliffs fissure and collapse,
  the air moves back from you like a wave
  and you can't breathe.

  Each of these phrases begins with some aspect of the natural world drawing back or falling apart. (The echoing sentence structure also draws attention to the repeated word “back,” stressing the idea that nature actively pulls away from any efforts to own or control it.) Nature is consciously choosing to turn away here, and the poem’s parallelism highlights that idea, stressing that nature has a mind and an agenda of its own.

  When the natural world itself begins to speak, it takes a similar tone, telling foolish humanity:

  You own nothing.
  You were a visitor, […]
  We never belonged to you.
  You never found us.

  These parallel phrasings make the choral voice of the trees, birds, cliffs, and air sound firm, calm, and final.

  Where parallelism appears in the poem:

  • Lines 7-8: “the trees unloose / their soft arms”
  • Line 9: “the birds take back”
  • Line 10: “the cliffs fissure”
  • Line 11: “the air moves back”
  • Line 13: “You own”
  • Line 14: “You were”
  • Line 15: “climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming”
  • Line 16: “We never”
  • Line 17: “You never”

• Personification

  

  

  Where personification appears in the poem:

  • Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt
  • Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. I
  • Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas a

• Irony

  

  

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  Where irony appears in the poem:

  • Dolorem e

• Simile

  

  

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  Where simile appears in the poem:

  • Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at.

"The Moment" Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Unloose
• Fissure
• Proclaiming

• (Location in poem: Lines 7-8: “the trees unloose / their soft arms”)

  Release, let go.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Moment”

• Form

  "The Moment" is written in slow-paced free verse (that is, verse without a set rhyme scheme or meter). Atwood measures her poem out in three equal sestets (or six-line stanzas), with lines all roughly the same length. The final effect sounds thoughtful, steady, and firm—fitting for a poem in which the natural world tells humanity that people are just guests in the world, not owners.

  While the poem is visually divided into three neat pieces, it can also be read as a poem in two parts. The first two stanzas are built from one long sentence that juxtaposes two perspectives on the same "moment": stanza 1 describes a person declaring that they own everything around them, while stanza 2 describes the world ironically withdrawing from them in the very instant they make that declaration. Meanwhile, the closing stanza—in which the natural world explains that it can't and won't be owned—is built from six short, firm sentences. This change in the poem's shape helps to make the voice of nature sound calm, cool, and distinctly unhurried.

• Meter

  "The Moment" is written in free verse, so it doesn't use a regular meter. Instead, Atwood creates rhythm through changing sentence shapes and punctuation. One good example appears in the poem's end-stopped closing lines:

  We never belonged to you.
  You never found us.
  It was always the other way round.

  These short, declarative lines slow the poem down, helping the big concluding idea—that humanity belongs to the world, not the other way around—land with firm and quiet certainty.

  Compare that rhythm to the enjambed momentum of the poem's first lines:

  The moment when, after many years
  of hard work and a long voyage

  Here, a line break falls at an odd point in a sentence, a spot where one wouldn't naturally pause in speech. The movement of the poem here is a little more stumbling, a little less calm. This effect subtly supports the idea that a person who has completed their "long voyage" doesn't have everything as neatly under their control as they might believe.

• Rhyme Scheme

  There's no rhyme scheme in "The Moment," which (like the majority of Atwood's poetry) is written in free verse. The lack of chiming sounds helps to make this poem sound quietly down-to-earth: not so much a lyrical, Romantic depiction of humanity's relationship to nature, more a plain, calm statement of fact.

  But the poem does make some music with subtle internal echoes. For just one example, take the dense alliteration, assonance, and consonance in line 10:

  the cliffs fissure and collapse,

  The sharp /c/, sibilant /s/, and fricative /f/ sounds here capture the sounds of the scene Atwood describes: cliffs cracking, crumbling, and falling with a roar and a rush.

“The Moment” Speaker

• The poem's speaker is a narrator, an observer imparting their hard-earned wisdom to their listeners. They begin the poem by speaking directly to their audience in the second person, explaining how "you" behave—a choice that suggests they're describing what anyone might find themselves doing. Perhaps, by extension, they're describing a mistake they've made and learned from themselves.

  That big mistake is to believe that you—a mere human being—can "say, I own this" about any place in the world, whether that's your "room" or your "country." Trying to lay personal claim to the world, this speaker understands, only leaves you feeling ironically alienated and isolated. To live well in the world, this speaker suggests, is to understand what nature teaches: "You own nothing. You were a visitor, time after time."

  By using this calm narrative voice, Atwood gives her poem a tone of authority and experience. Her speaker is able to stand apart from the story they tell, reporting on the folly of humanity and listening carefully to what the natural world has to say in response. Perhaps this narrator's choice to personify and give a voice to the "trees," the "birds," the "cliffs," and the "air" even suggests that they've developed a faintly mystical capacity to understand what the world is saying to them.

“The Moment” Setting

• This poem could take place anywhere in the world. By making a sweeping, general point about how people treat the places where they live—whether that means their "room, / house, half-acre, square mile, island," or "country"—Atwood implies that she's addressing a truth applicable to all humanity, wherever you look on the globe.

  The particular things that she depicts people doing, like "climbing the hill, planting the flag," and "proclaiming," suggest that one of humanity's biggest problems is its stubborn belief that it can lay claim to the world. Declaring that the ground upon which you've planted a flag is yours now doesn't make it so, this poem counters. Nature was here before any arrogant human ideas of ownership, and it'll be here afterward, too.

  Atwood depicts the everlasting natural world as a force that can be equally gentle and stern. When people are in the right relationship to nature, she suggests, the trees put "their soft arms [...] around you"—but they drop you fast when you try to claim, "I own this."

Literary and Historical Context of “The Moment”

• Literary Context

  The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood (1939-present) is best known for her award-winning dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. But she is also a prolific and critically acclaimed poet, essayist, and literary critic. Much of her writing explores themes of gender and oppression. Her work also reveals a deep interest in religion, the environment, the power of language, and Canadian culture and identity.

  “The Moment” appeared in Atwood's 1995 collection Morning in the Burned House. In its use of the second person and a thoughtful, wry free verse, it's a characteristic Atwood poem. Thematically, it also reflects Atwood's interest in humanity's relationship to nature—a troubled relationship, to her mind, and one she explores at length in her post-apocalyptic novel Oryx and Crake. This poem might be read as an early example of ecopoetry, perhaps in tandem with later works like Boey Kim Cheng's "Report to Wordsworth."

  Atwood remains an important literary voice and cultural figure, often called upon for comment about an ominous global decline in women's rights (which some readers feel she predicted in The Handmaid's Tale—though Atwood herself makes the point that she included nothing in that novel that had not already happened somewhere in the world). She has won many awards and honors, including two Booker Prizes.

  Historical Context

  This tale of human arrogance was published in 1995, at a moment when green and ecological movements were taking on a new urgency. Crises like the hole in the ozone layer, deforestation, oil spills, and animal extinction were becoming more and more a part of the public consciousness. So was the burgeoning threat of climate change.

  In her fiction, her poetry, and her public advocacy, Atwood has always made the clear, bare point that the environment isn’t a niche issue: it’s the precondition for any kind of human activity. As she put it in a 2010 speech:

  [...] if we didn’t have “the environment” – the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat – there wouldn’t be any literature at all because we ourselves would not exist. [...] If Earth’s temperature rises much higher, our planet will become uninhabitable—not by all life, perhaps—a few deep-ocean forms will surely survive, unless the ocean boils away—but certainly by us.

  In that sense, the preservation of an environment similar to the one we have is a precondition of literature. Unless we can preserve such an environment, your writing and my writing and everyone else’s writing will become simply irrelevant, as there will be nobody left to read it.

More “The Moment” Resources

• External Resources

  • A Brief Biography — Read the Poetry Foundation's short biography of Atwood and read more of her poems.

  • The Poem Aloud — Listen to Atwood herself reading the poem aloud.

  • Atwood's Website — Visit Atwood's official website for more on her work.

  • Atwood's Influence — Read a recent interview with Atwood in which, with tongue in cheek, she discusses becoming a "great sage on top of the mountain" as an older writer.

  • An Interview with Atwood — Watch an interview with Atwood in which she discusses her life and work.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Margaret Atwood

  • Half-Hanged Mary

  • Siren Song

  • The City Planners

  • This Is a Photograph of Me

  • [you fit into me]