Introduction of the poem “Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer”:
“Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer” is a powerful and ironic poem by Margaret Atwood that explores the psychological and emotional consequences of human attempts to dominate and control nature. Set against the backdrop of early settlement, the poem presents the gradual mental breakdown of a pioneer who tries to impose order on the vast, untamed wilderness. Atwood critiques the colonial mindset that views nature as something to be conquered and reshaped according to human will.
Through vivid imagery and a tone that blends dark humor with seriousness, the poem illustrates how the pioneer’s rigid insistence on structure and control ultimately leads to confusion, obsession, and madness. Instead of mastering the land, the pioneer becomes overwhelmed by it, suggesting the futility of resisting natural forces. The poem reflects Atwood’s broader concerns about environmental destruction, human arrogance, and the fragile boundary between civilization and chaos.
Summary of the Poem “Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer”
Primitive Man in a Hostile Natural Environment:
The poetess seems to be depicting the time when there was no civilization and the man was struggling to establish his identity in an environment negatively privileged. In fact, the man was a pioneer. He was encountering several difficulties in establishing his identity. The man who was pioneer was attempting to separate himself from that environment instead of trying to adapt to it. The man was left in the midst of natural surroundings. He was standing at such a place where there was nothing except nature. The man (pioneer) asserted his authority in the wilderness and proclaimed himself the centre in a world that had no centre to him. There were no walls and borders where he was placed. The man found totally an unenclosed space and the unfamiliar environment around him. The sky which was above him, seemed to be at no height. As he was unable to live in such environment, he felt great discomfort and he called upon to let him out.
Struggle for Identity and Rebellion Against Nature:
In the wilderness, the man who was a pioneer, had to face many unendurable problems for establishing his identity and authority. Instead of making an adjustment with that strange place, he wanted to live a separate life. He was not ready to follow the rules and principles of nature. A place where he was put, was fully open place. He wanted to build border to seclude himself from the strange environment, so he put up himself into the task of locating his real identity in that strange place. Indeed, he was challenging nature and was going against it. He started farming for his survival and started cultivating the barren land. He wanted to grow something by himself. By using shovels, he started digging the soil. He made the lines in the land for sowing the seeds. Though while digging the earth, he sensed divinity in nature, but he ignored it, and he continued fighting against this randomness. The seed which the man (pioneer) had sown, began to germinate and after sometime converted into small plants. But it was very unfortunate with him that he could not depict the names of those plants. He was also unable to communicate with nature.
Construction of Boundaries and Growing Anxiety:
In order to separate himself in the wilderness, the man (pioneer) constructed a house with borders. But his struggle and difficulties did he was alone and secluded. While living in the house built by him, he felt not end here. He still felt uncertainty and confusion. In the strange environment, restlessness at night. He was thinking that he had overcome nature and its influence, but he was wrong. He was still worrying about himself. As he thought that by making a fence around his house and his fields, he would remain safe and nature would not disturb him, but his perplexity and uneasiness grew and he got the feeling that his attempts to restrict the influence of nature were useless. He understood that it was impossible to keep the nature out. He felt nature alive and actively hostile. As nature has its own rules and principles, it does not like that someone should try to go against it. It does not like any kind of fence or border. It shows its hostility when someone tries to break its rules.
Nature’s Resistance and Disorder in the Wilderness:
The man built the house and the fences around it. He broke the ground for gardens. But this progress was insane because the innate savagery of the land remains intact. It is very difficult to invade nature. If someone tries to exploit nature it shows its violent and aggressive form. Its wrath cannot be prevented. During the daylight, the man (pioneer) found that in that wild area which was full of dense forests, there were many boggy places and in these boggy places different kinds of worms and insects were flourishing. They were producing great noise. It seemed as if they were complaining angrily against man for disturbing them. Next the man saw small and high rocks in his way of progress. The man was highly disgusted to see all this. He thought that in this wilderness nothing was kept in order and there was an absence of order and it was very difficult for him to deal with them. The forest seemed to argue with him without speaking that everything was intact in this natural environment.
Continuous Struggle and Futile Efforts to Dominate Nature:
For many years, the man (pioneer) had been struggling to maintain his existence in such an environment when everything was beyond his control. At every step, he had to face a new challenge. He had been attempting to make a favourable atmosphere for him. As he looked great vision for progress, he kept making his best efforts to invade nature by going against its rules and principles. At any cost he was not ready to become submissive before nature. He exploited the nature a lot. He had been dangling the hooks of sown roots under. the surface of the shallow earth. It was like enticing whales with a bent pin. (In other words, he had been ploughing the soft land and growing different kinds of plants. In fact, by doing so, he wanted to make nature feel his power. He wanted that nature should surrender before him, but it was in vain.) Besides, he thought that in this strange land, the worms were biting.
Realization of Futility and Missed Harmony with Nature:
The futility of the man’s (the pioneer’s) attempt to keep himself secluded became clearer to him. If the pioneer had not attempted hard to keep his garrison (and seclude himself) and simply succumbed to the nature he would have been more successful. If he had developed an intimacy with nature and its different creatures and moulded himself according to the atmosphere of nature, he would not have felt any difficulty to establish his identity. (In other words, if he, like Noah, had stocked his log house boat with all the animals even the wolves, he might have floated easily.) But he showed his determination to wage a fight against the rules and principles of nature. But it was his obstinacy which forced him not to change his opinion. The man (the pioneer) was not prepared to form a friendly relationship with nature. He opposed the will of nature and hence he felt distressed and dejected. As much as, he kept opposing natural surroundings, he created great difficulties in establishing his identity. Though he felt that the ground was solid under his foot, his foot was sinking into the ground.
Defeat of the Pioneer and Triumph of Nature:
The man (the pioneer) had been trying to establish an identity- of himself by keeping himself secluded in the wilderness but he was failure in every way. He was unaware of the fact that he was doing everything by going against the will of nature and in this way, he could never succeed in his object. The nature put many heavy obstacles in the way of the pioneer, so he encountered innumerable struggles and difficulties in his attempt to establish his identity. The things in the lap of nature did not let him know more about them nor did he succeed to give the name to the things of nature. He did not allow the wolves inside by making a fence around his house, but they were waiting outside to hunt for him. The sea waves raised higher and reached to that place where the man (the pioneer) had removed or wiped out the trees. The waves touched the feet of the man. The man had already seen this disintegration. The pioneer was completely embarrassed by the true power of nature and got terrified. He wondered at its universal presence At the end, he lost his fight against nature and his space created by him, was invaded by an unnamed whale.
Critical Appreciation of the Poem Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer:
Introduction:
The poem entitled Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer was published in Atwood’s second collection The Animals in That Country in 1968. In this poem, the poetess shows that it is very difficult to establish identity in a strange land without making an intimacy with the existing environment. She presents an example of a settler who builds the house with border to live a secluded life in wilderness. But for establishing his identity, he wants to bring changes in natural environment and he has to face great obstacles created by nature. Nature does not like man’s idea of making fence around his house. Nature also does not like that man should bring any change in its order. In the poem, the poetess also shows man’s stubbornness to go against the conventional rules of a society. The poetess thinks that a society cannot accept a man who tries to impose his own changes upon it. By doing so, he can never succeed to establish his own identity, but he invites his disaster.
Thought-content:
The stranger (the pioneer) in the poem attempts to separate himself from the environment instead of trying to adapt to it. As he fails to establish himself in the un-enclosed space and the unfamiliar environment around him, he tries to build borders to seclude him from the strange environment of the wilderness. The pioneer asserts his authority in the wilderness. He begins farming. He begins to dig lines in the soil to fight against the randomness he senses in nature. However, his uncertainty and confusion never end. His perplexity and uneasiness grow and he gets the feeling that his attempts to restrict the influence of nature are useless. He comes to know that it is impossible to keep the nature out. The pioneer is completely embarrassed by the true power of nature and gets terrified. Ultimately, he becomes the victim of the chaos in nature and his dream of establishing his own identity and of making progress is shattered.
Theme of the Poem:
The poetess seems to mock the pioneer who by definition brings progress to a pristine area. With the touch of man, who builds fences and houses and breaks ground for gardens, comes progress. But this progress is insane because the innate savagery of the land remains intact. In this way, the theme of this poem is the conflict between nature and man. In the poem we find an alien who struggles to live in a strange society and fails in adjusting to the society and therefore tries to withdraw from everything. The society in which he is placed is less friendly to him. He encounters nothing but difficulties in his new land. Man (the pioneer) keeps fighting against nature and its ‘unordered absence’, trying to create a sense of order and believing he can do that, he sinks, he falters and unwillingly gives in to the power of natural order and power of how things are, as they are. The poetess employs the metaphor of the water to the land in order to emphasise that there can be no real boundaries cut in the wilderness.
Form, Structure and Tone of the Poem:
The poem is written in free verse. There is no rhyming or specific rhythm. The poem is told from a limited omniscient point of view. The narrator is not the character, but someone who can see what is occurring and knows the thoughts and feelings of the character. There is only one character, a man who can be described as a pioneer. There is no shift in the narrative voice. The poem is split up into seven sections. Each section has stanza in it. This way, every new thought is repeated and each shift in time if noted. The setting becomes more and more vast, more and more confined, as the story moves forward. Each section is its own event. Each event unravels and leads into the next. The entire poem is in the past tense. Enjambment and Caesura is consistent throughout the poem.
The tone of the poem is slow, like the author really meant to drag out the progression of the pioneer’s insanity. The words are broken which suggests the unfamiliarity the pioneer has with where he is and how he struggles with the situation. By separating the words and phrases, however, she also brings a lot of focus to certain words and thoughts throughout the poem. The tone towards the character is rather “matter of fact”. This is what happened, and here is what he did. The narrator seems to be sliding with nature.
The Use of Figures of Speech, Allusion and Imagery:
The poetess has used the figure of speech metaphor in the following lines:
“He stood, a point
on a sheet of green paper.”
The man (the pioneer) is not really standing on a sheet of green paper but an empty space, outside (green).
The poetess has used the figure of speech personification in the following lines:
“The ground
replied with aphorisms.”
(The ground cannot speak.)
“The idea of an animal
patters across the roof.”
(An idea cannot patter.)
“In the darkness the fields
defend themselves with fences
in vain.”
(The fields cannot defend themselves or feel vain.)
“Outbursts
of rocks.”
(Rocks do not have outbursts.)
“……. the unanswering
forest implied.”
(Forests have no way of implicating.)
The poetess has also employed the biblical allusion in the poem:
“If he had known unstructured
space is a deluge
and stocked his log house-
boat with all the animals
even the wolves
he might have floated.”
(This is an allusion to Noah and the ark.)
Throughout the poem, Atwood uses languages that gives us a very definitive picture of what this place looks like and what it feels like to be there, fighting the nature like the pioneer did.
The Use of Situational Irony: In the poem the poetess has used situational irony. The man (the pioneer) states the ground is solid, but his foot sinks into the ground.
“…. he stated
The land is solid
and stamped.
watching his foot sink
down through stone
upto the knee.”
Appropriateness of the Title:
The title of the poem is very short explanation of the events that occur in the poem. There is a pioneer, of physical or of psychological means whose insanities progress as he resists what is, as it is, and tries to change it to fit his own ‘needs’. Sometimes in life individuals may resist a situation or circumstance they are forced with. As a result, they may lose their ground, not only in wherever they are, but in who they are as well.