Images of an Underwater Shipwreck

Images:

 ~book of myths   

~loaded camera

~sharpened edge of the knife-blade

~wet suit, flippers, mask

~sun-flooded schooner of Cousteau

~Innocent, foreboding ladder, and crawling down it as awkwardly as an insect

~Air, both above and below the water
~Ocean being powerful and mysterious
~Creatures living in the ocean
~Beam of light from the lamp on the wreckage
~The wreckage and the damage on the wreckage
~Mermaid/merman
~Damaged instruments of the wreckage, both the actual instruments and the speaker

Interpretation:
     Through imagery, Adrienne Rich shows that the ocean is a powerful place that holds painful memories of shipwrecks and floating bodies, of planned trips and failed journeys in her poem, Diving into the Wreck.  Not only does it show these memories vividly, it also suggests that loneliness is mirrored in the strange aquatic environment.  In the ocean there “is no question of power”, being vast enough to swallow many a ship and leave no evidence of the wreckage above the surface of the water while the lonely diver descends into the ocean to discover the described wreckage with only a book, a knife, and a camera to keep the speaker company.  The images of power portrayed by the ocean and meekness portrayed by the diver juxtaposed together show the fragility of life.
     In this work, the ocean is described as powerful and indifferent.  The diver seems to hold it in apprehensive reverence, describing the experience of the initial decent fearfully: “First the air is blue and then/ it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet/ my mask is powerful”.  The disorienting flash of colors and the thought of blacking out are written in short, choppy lines illustrating the fear of entering the unknown.  The diver also has to “learn alone” how to breathe underwater, gaining no help from the powerful “deep element”, showing how empty the world beneath the surface is without companionship.  As the diver goes deeper, the audience catches a glimpse of the wreckage and what the ocean has done to it.  The ship is in shambles and the diver describing the ship’s sorry condition:
                    “The evidence of damage
                    worn by salt and away into this threadbare
                    beauty
                    the ribs of the disaster
                    curving their assertion
                    among the tentative haunters”,
an example of the abrasive tendencies of the ocean’s waters.  The image conjures an eerie tone through the words “threadbare”, “ribs”, and “haunters”, suggesting the ship is haunted by the bodies that perished in the sinking.  The diver also describes the bodies floating in the water, saying “I am she: I am he/ whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes”, adding to the eerie, dark tone created around the ship.  The diver also is the only witness to the floating remnants, giving to the illusion of being completely alone.  The ocean holds these and many more empty landscapes of horror and tragedy forgotten within the ever constant flow of the waves.
     The vulnerability of human life illustrated in the poem creates a strong sense of irony when plastered against the harsh, powerful ocean.  Although the ocean is strong enough to crush the individual entering it, the individual has a certain amount of power to explore its depths without it retaliating.  Human life is fragile when compared to the ever changing hostility of the ocean, and the poem illustrates this by contrasting the dead lifeless corpses to the living diver but giving the same eerie feeling of being alone.