Imagery In The Poem Cell By Margaret Atwood

In the poem “Cell”, Margaret Atwood contrasts the cancer cell against the popular, negative image. The author uses literary devices such as imagery, figurative language, structure, and perspective to create the contrast. The result makes the reader consider the cancer cell in a new light. There is beauty in a cancer cell and we are not as different from cancer cells as we think. 

The author uses kinaesthetic and visual imagery to describe the cell throughout the poem. The imagery is heavily tied with figurative language. The first visual imagery found in the poem is the comparison to a flower. The author first beseeches the reader to “look objectively”, and the reader will find that the cancer cell is comparable in its beauty to a flower.

The author paints the picture of a flower with a “mauve centre and pink petals”. Flowers are commonly associated with harmlessness, peace, and beauty. They have a positive connotation, whereas cancer is considered hideous and dreadful. The author calls on the reader to see the beauty of the cancer cell, perhaps from a scientific point of view, as the features of a “centre” and “petals” are reminiscent of a cell’s nucleus and cytoplasm. The colours the author chooses for the flower are “mauve” and “pink”. Both colours can be found inside the human body, but another commonality in the colours is that neither are bright or sharp, but soft and mellow. This again detracts from the aggressiveness of cancer. The author might be asking the reader to think independently and arrive at the thought that the cancer cell is a wondrous character. The author might have had past experiences involving cancer, but she refuses to blame the cell for the grievances, perhaps because she considers us humans no different from cancer cells. 
The second imagery is also a visual one.

This time, the cancer cell is compared to an “alien” on the “cover for a pulpy thirties sci-fi magazine”. This comparison draws on our fear of the strange and the unknown and reminds of the bizarreness of the cancer cell. The common connotation with fictional aliens is that they are an outlandish but sophisticated race, often cruel and invasive towards humans. The author implies the same is true with cancer cells in this comparison. The alien is described as “a success”, indicating its efficiency and deadliness. The alien, or the cancer cell, is “all purple eye and jelly tentacles and spines, or are they gills”. Humans do not have tentacles, spines nor gills, this clearly shows that the alien is nothing like us. It is notable that the colour now darkened to “purple” from the initial “mauve” and “pink”. This could indicate a darker side of the cancer cell as the poem progresses in tension. The author chooses to use an uncertain “or are they gills” to show that we do not thoroughly understand cancer. The alien cell “creeps around on granular Martian dirt red as the inside of the body”. For the first time, the cancer is moving, and it moves in a furtive, scheming fashion. The inside of the body is compared to the Martian landscape. The imagery of Mars is an uneven landscape pockmarked by craters, covered in fine, powdery red dirt. Mars is also the god of war in Roman mythology, which escalates the belligerent tension in the poem. The colour red contrasts with previous mentions of “mauve” and “pink”, as well as “purple”. Red is a more passionate, fiery colour, brighter and more intense than the others. Again, this implies the invasion process by the cancer as it wages its war on the

body. 
The third stanza describes the cell in its process of metastasising. The process is redolent of a plant or a fungus spreading their seeds or “spores” far and wide before “taking root” and growing. While the part where “its tender walls expand and burst” conjures up the image of a virus, finished with using its host cell, destroys the host and looks for a new one. These are all effective ways of dispersion in the biological world, and the author has found a parallel in cancer. The cell is compared to money, which is often described the root of all evils, in the same breath as “take root”. This implies that the cell is colonising more parts of the body, just like the ubiquity of money in society, and spreading its disease. The other comparison is to “a fiction or miasma”, which “drifts in and out of people’s brains”. This conveys that the cancer is unpredictable and evasive, in the same way a unplaceable hint of a smell or a fragment of a storyline flits across the mind. Miasma also has negative connotations of a bad stench, which is comparable to the cancer cell in the way that its source is hard to find and that it is unpleasant. After its dispersion, the cancer “dig themselves industriously in.” This provokes a scene of an animal burrowing into a new nest, hiding from danger. Although “industrious” has positive connotations of diligent or hard-working, the only goal in the life of a cancer cell is survival, and it is efficient at what it does. This description of the cancer’s behaviour reminds the reader of the vivaciousness of the cancer cell. It is relentless and brutal in its quest to survive and multiply, to be immortal. At this stage, the cancer cell cannot be stopped. 
The fourth and final stanza is different from the ones above in several ways. First, the stanza is filled with end stops, with a total of ten. There are a total of three end stops in the first three stanzas combined (two in the first, none in the second, one in the third). This reflects the way the author structured the poem. The first three stanzas are meant to be a continuous flow, akin to the way the cancer first makes contacts then gradually grows without pause. Then, in the last stanza, the proliferation of end stops compares with the way the cancer matures then metastasises. The more frequent use of end stops also forces the reader to read rapid, choppy, broken sentences, contrasting with the uninterrupted flow of a single sentence stretching from the end of the first stanza to the end of the third stanza. Second, the stanza is different from the other stanzas content-wise. The first three stanzas paint a visual picture of the cancer cell in its motions. The last stanza lists the motives and properties of the cancer cell, then commands the reader to compare himself/herself with it (“Look in the mirror”). Therefore, the last stanza carries the most meaning out of all the stanza and the author strategically placed it last to produce a lasting impression on the reader, especially after the buildup to it from the initial three stanzas. 
A notable literary device the author uses at three different points throughout the poem is the outside perspective. These quotes are written in italicised letters to show that they are interjections into the account of the author. The first instance of its use is “How pretty”  in the first stanza. Here, the reader makes the first objective contact with the cancer cell, and it seems beautiful and harmless. The quotes increase in tension as the poem progresses. The second instance of a quotation is “How striking” in the second stanza. Now past the initial impression of beauty, the reader is impressed by the outlandishness and the efficiency of the cancer cell. The third and last use of a quotation specifies the source as “the lab technician”, as if in a hospital environment or research laboratory. “The lab technician says, It has forgotten how to die.” The awe of the cancer cell is turning into fear. The harmless beauty is turning into an indestructible machine. This compounds the effect of the final stanza as the author wants the readers to realise that they are no different from the cancer cell in their greed. Our exploitation of the Earth is akin to the parasitism of the cancer on the body. It is remarkable that no mention to the passing of time has been made in the poem. This could indicate that the idea the author is trying to convey is a timeless and universal one. 

Through her use of imagery, figurative language, structure and perspectives, Atwood has created a portrait of the cancer cell as beautiful yet frightening in its capacity and efficiency for destruction to feed its survival and growth. At the end of the poem, the author makes her point that we as humans are not different from cancer in our natural tendency to be selfish and greedy, that we are bringing upon our host planet the same kind of havoc cancer cells wreak in our very bodies.