which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping."
Noura: I think in the first sentence, the narrator says that he would like to observe the person while the person is sleeping. In the second sentence, I think the narrator says that he would like to observe the person, while he, the narrator, is sleeping. Maybe these two sentences reflect that the narrator can only see the person when he is sleeping, he can only see him in his dreams. In fact, he says that watching the person sleeping "may not happen", but he doesn't use these words in the second sentence, when saying that he would like to watch the person while he, the narrator, is sleeping. So maybe this person doesn't really exist, or is dead.
NOTE: THE OTHER TEAM MEMBERS' RESPONSES ARE STATED AS COMMENTS.
" I would like to watch you sleeping,
ReplyDeletewhich may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping."
Xavier: I think that, in the first sentence of the poem, the author of the poem wants to put the emphasis on the fact that she would like to see someone (we don't who this person is) while he's/she's sleeping. However, the second sentence of the poem is different. In fact, the comma (just after the word sleep) makes us think that Margaret Atwood would like to see the person, not necessary just while he sleeps. As Noura said earlier, there's a chance that the author can see the person only while she's sleeping: in this case, the person lives in her mind, maybe because he died or is gone (we don't know this detail).
As we just saw, just by putting a comma at a special place in a sentence we can change the whole purpose of this part of the text. This only comma makes us think that the meaning of the story is probably very profound. We see that the whole text is probably about a person that the author misses.
Elisabeth: These two sentences are exactly the same, except for the comma. The comma makes a big difference. In the first sentence, the narrator means that she would like to watch the person while that person is sleeping. In the second sentence, the narrator means that she would like to watch the person while SHE is sleeping, which means that she would like to see the person in her dreams. This makes us think that the person the narrator is talking about is dead, because she says the it may not happen, that she should watch the person sleeping, and also because she can only see that lost person in her dreams.
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