X. Mythology Remixed

Giving Voice to the Monster

The Odyssey · Homer · 8th c. BCE ⟶ Siren Song · Atwood · 1974

The course began at the edge of the Odyssey, with the wife who stayed home — Penelope. It ends back in the same epic, with the monster who lured men to their deaths — the Siren. In Homer, the Sirens are a danger heard from the outside: beautiful voices that wreck ships, which the hero Odysseus survives only by being tied to the mast. Almost three thousand years later, Atwood does something new: she lets one Siren speak for herself.

And what the Siren confesses is unsettling. The “irresistible” song isn’t really about her beautiful voice at all. It’s about you — and your wish to be the one special person who could rescue her.

Teacher’s Edition · History & Background

From the deadly voice to the bored professional

Homer’s Odyssey (composed around the 8th century BCE) is one of the foundational epics of Western literature — an oral poem of the hero Odysseus’s ten-year journey home from the Trojan War. In Book XII, the sorceress Circe warns him about the Sirens, whose singing lures sailors to wreck on an island heaped with the bones of the dead. Odysseus plugs his crew’s ears with wax and has himself lashed to the mast, so he alone can hear the song and live to tell it. The Sirens tempt him with knowledge — promising to sing him everything the Greeks and Trojans suffered at Troy, and all that passes on the earth. In the classical frame, the Sirens are obstacles and monsters. We hear their song, but never their side of the story.

Margaret Atwood’s “Siren Song” (1974) flips that completely. It is a dramatic monologue spoken by one of the Sirens herself — and she is not a glamorous temptress but a bored professional who resents her picturesque, mythical role and the costume that comes with it. She offers to tell you the secret of the fatal song, pleading that only you, uniquely, could free her. That plea is the song. The lure was never sweetness; it was flattery — the listener’s craving to be the chosen one.

Context worth having ready

Atwood is one of Canada’s most celebrated writers (later famous for the novel The Handmaid’s Tale). “Siren Song” belongs to a wave of 20th-century poems that practice what the poet Adrienne Rich called “re-vision”: retelling old myths from the point of view of the silenced — women, monsters, the objects of the story. This makes a fitting close for the course: it opened by re-voicing one woman of the Odyssey, Penelope (Pairing I), and it ends by re-voicing another — turning a familiar monster into a speaking, ironic, weary self. Students arrive already knowing Greek myth, so the surprise lands at once.

Point of view

Heard ⟶ Speaking

The Siren is

An object ⟶ A subject

The real lure

Knowledge ⟶ Flattery

Grand epic ⟶ Dry & ironic

The Poems · Read in Sequence

Classic · 8th c. BCE

The Odyssey

Homer

Book XII — Odysseus and the Sirens (excerpt)

In flowery meads the sportive Sirens play,
Touch the soft lyre, and tune the vocal lay;
Me, me alone, with fetters firmly bound,
The gods allow to hear the dangerous sound.
Hear and obey; if freedom I demand,
Be every fetter strain’d, be added band to band.

Now round the masts my mates the fetters roll’d,
And bound me limb by limb with fold on fold.
Then bending to the stroke, the active train
Plunge all at once their oars, and cleave the main.

“Oh stay, O pride of Greece! Ulysses, stay!
Oh cease thy course, and listen to our lay!
Blest is the man ordain’d our voice to hear,
The song instructs the soul, and charms the ear.
Approach! thy soul shall into raptures rise!
Approach! and learn new wisdom from the wise!
We know whate’er the kings of mighty name
Achieved at Ilion in the field of fame;
Whate’er beneath the sun’s bright journey lies.
Oh stay, and learn new wisdom from the wise!”

Thus the sweet charmers warbled o’er the main;
My soul takes wing to meet the heavenly strain;
I give the sign, and struggle to be free;
Swift row my mates, and shoot along the sea;
New chains they add, and rapid urge the way,
Till, dying off, the distant sounds decay.

Translated into verse by Alexander Pope (1725). Pope uses “Ulysses,” the Roman name for Odysseus. · public domain

More Homer →

❦ Nearly three millennia later, the monster answers

Contemporary · 1974

Siren Song

Margaret Atwood

In copyright · read the full poem via the link below

What happens in the poem

Atwood’s poem is spoken by one of the Sirens herself. In a dry, confiding voice she admits she is tired of being a picturesque legend and resents the whole monstrous role she is stuck playing. She offers to let the reader in on the secret of the one song no sailor can resist — and the secret turns out to be the plea itself: she begs the listener for rescue as though only they were special enough to save her. That flattery is the entire trap. By the final turn she lets slip, with a shrug, that it works on everyone, every single time.

Because “Siren Song” is still under copyright, its full text lives at the authorized link below rather than being reprinted here.

Read the full poem ↗ More Atwood →

Close Reading

Read, then look closer

Work through these on your own or with a partner. Point to the exact words that make you say what you say.

In Homer, who is telling the story — and whose voice do we never actually hear from the inside? In Atwood, who is speaking?
The Sirens in Homer promise sailors knowledge — wisdom and the whole story of Troy. What does Atwood’s Siren promise you? Which is a stronger temptation, and why?
Odysseus has himself tied to the mast so he can enjoy the song and still survive. Atwood’s reader gets no rope. How does her poem put you in danger?
Atwood’s Siren sounds bored and even a little sarcastic about her costume and her job. Why would a poet make a legendary monster sound so ordinary?
Both texts are called a “song.” What is each song really for — and who does it serve?

The heart of the pairing

Homer lets us watch the Sirens from a safe distance. Atwood unties the rope, hands the monster a microphone, and lets her catch you with the oldest bait of all: being told you’re special.

How to run the close reading

The lesson is point of view

1. Establish the frame in Homer. The Sirens are described, feared, and escaped — they never become people. We get their words only as a snare that the clever hero out-maneuvers. Heroism here is self-control and cunning (metis): Odysseus wants to hear the forbidden song but arranges to survive his own desire. The Sirens are pure object.

2. Feel the switch in Atwood. Read the first tercet aloud, then ask: who is “I,” and who is “you”? The moment students realize the Siren is addressing them, the poem’s trap is already closing. Atwood gives the silenced monster interiority — boredom, contempt for her costume, a con artist’s patience.

3. Locate the real lure. This is the key move. In Homer the bait is knowledge and honeyed sound. In Atwood the bait is flattery — the promise that the listener, uniquely, is the one who could rescue her. The song works not because it is beautiful but because we want to be the exceptional one who could save her. The danger has moved from the world into the reader’s ego.

4. Watch the register drop. Homer’s epic diction is grand and formulaic (“renowned Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans”). Atwood’s Siren is dry, modern, and ironic, complaining about her costume like someone bored at work. That deflation is deliberate: myth is pulled off its pedestal and made to talk like a person who is very tired of her job.

Homer’s frame

Third person, from the outside. The hero survives temptation through foresight; the Sirens remain unknowable monsters. We are safe listeners.

Atwood’s counter

First person, from the inside. The monster confides in us — and the confiding is the weapon. We are the sailor, and the poem lands us on the rocks.

Guiding questions · with what to listen for

Homer’s Sirens promise Odysseus knowledge — the whole story of Troy and more. Why is knowledge the perfect bait for him specifically? Listen for the recognition that Odysseus is defined by curiosity and cunning; the Sirens tempt him at his exact weak point. Temptation in Homer is tailored to the hero’s virtues.
In Atwood, what is the Siren actually offering the listener? Listen for the offer of specialness — the sense that the listener alone is chosen. The lure is the reader’s vanity and desire to be the rescuer. Push: is that a more modern, or just a more honest, account of temptation?
Why does Atwood make her Siren sound bored and unglamorous? Listen for how deflating the myth exposes the machinery: a “monster” who finds her role tedious reveals that seduction is a repeatable job, not magic. The boredom also disarms us — she seems too honest to be dangerous.
Homer’s reader is safe; Atwood’s is not. How does each text position us? Listen for the structural insight: Homer frames the Sirens so we watch from the deck; Atwood collapses the frame so the song is aimed at us. Her closing admission that the trick always works means it worked on you.
What does a poet gain by retelling a myth from the monster’s side? Listen for “re-vision”: giving voice to the silenced exposes what the original left out, and questions who gets to be a hero and who is written off as a monster.

Annotation prompts · hand these to students

On the Homer

Underline every detail that keeps the Sirens at a distance (they are “espied,” they “raised their song,” the crew “rowed on”). In the margin, note each precaution Odysseus takes. What does all this control tell you about what the epic values?

On the Atwood

Circle every “you” and “I.” Mark the exact line where you first feel the Siren is talking directly to you. Then ask: at what point were you flattered — and had the trap already worked?

The thesis of the pairing

A myth told from the outside becomes a confession from the inside. By handing the monster a voice, Atwood converts a story about a hero’s survival into a mirror — and what it reflects is the reader’s own hunger to be told they are the special one. Set beside the opening Penelope module, it closes a bracket around the whole course: the women of the Odyssey, monster and faithful wife alike, finally get to speak.

Words & Allusions

Sirens: In Greek myth, creatures (often part bird, part woman) whose song lured sailors to shipwreck and death.
Odysseus: The hero of the Odyssey, famed for cleverness. Known by his Roman name Ulysses.
the Achaeans: Homer’s name for the Greeks — the “pride of Greece” the Sirens call out to.
epithet: A fixed descriptive phrase attached to a name in epic (such as hailing the hero as the “pride of Greece”) — an aid to oral performance.
Ilion: Another name for Troy; the Sirens boast they know all that was “achieved at Ilion.”
dramatic monologue: A poem spoken entirely in the voice of a character who is not the poet — Atwood’s form here.
re-vision: Retelling an old story from a new, often silenced, point of view — a hallmark of modern myth poems.
irony: A gap between what is said and what is meant. Atwood’s Siren says “help me” while setting a trap.