The Circle Game

“The Circle Game” is a narrative poem by Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood, published in her 1964 poetry collection of the same name. The Circle Game won the 1966 Governor General’s Award, and the titular poem was later published in The Selected Poems 1965-1975. This poem, like many others in the critically acclaimed The Circle Game, addresses the idea of an innocuous surface with a probe into darker truths. The poem also features Atwood’s trademark parentheticals for aside commentary and her use of Roman numerals to divide the poem into distinct sections. This poem tackles a plethora of themes important to Atwood’s writing, including the environment, oppressive or restrictive systems, and references to the past in conjunction with present and future realities.

Poet Biography

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, but she spent much of her childhood in the woods of Quebec because of her father’s research on forest entomology. These regular travels did not allow Atwood to attend school full-time until she was 12 years old. As a result, she read whatever she could get her hands on and wrote poetry and plays. At age 16, she aspired to be a professional writer and, once enrolled at Victoria College, began publishing her poems and articles in the college literary journal while pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in English. She continued graduate work in the United States at Radcliffe College where she completed her master’s degree but did not finish her doctorate. Amid her graduate studies, she published her first poetry collection, Double Persephone (1961), which won Atwood the first of many prizes.

Atwood taught at various universities, including the University of British Columbia and the University of Alberta in Canada. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she published over 10 poetry collections along with her first novel, The Edible Woman (1969), a satire of consumerism. During this time, she also married and divorced her first husband, American writer Jim Polk—and met her second partner, writer Graeme Gibson, with whom she had her daughter Eleanor in 1976.

The 1980s saw Atwood cement her literary reputation. She published her most famous novel, often associated with feminism and totalitarianism, The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985. This book became a popular Hulu television series in 2016, for which Atwood was the consulting producer. In 2019, Atwood published a sequel titled The Testaments, based on both the television series and original book.

While Atwood continued with poetry and novel writing, her literary wheelhouse then extended to other genres. In 2008, she published a series of lectures and wrote a libretto for the chamber opera Pauline. In 2016, she developed the comic book series Angel Catbird.

Poem Text

Atwood, Margaret. “The Circle Game.” 1974. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem is divided into seven sections with alternating storylines. In section i, the poem describes children playing outdoors with interlinking arms, singing, and dancing. In Stanza 4, outside observers—“we” (Line 14)—are introduced, discussing how they watch the children’s concentrated faces and “might mistake this / tranced movement for joy” (Lines 20-21). The last stanza repetitively describes their movements even more intensely as going “round and round” (Line 25), including elements of nature in the background, such as “the grass / underfoot” (Line 27-28).

In section ii, Atwood introduces two adults: the speaker themselves as well as a “you” figure: “Being with you / here, in this room” (Lines 37-38). The speaker is the “I” (Line 44) in the third stanza. Along with these two characters are “many mirrors” (Line 50). There is a room next door with people “arguing, opening and closing drawers” (Line 57) that takes the “you’s” focus away from the “I.”

In section iii, Atwood brings the focus back to the games and the “reason” (Line 75) for them. The speaker—“we” (Line 79, presumably the children’s parents, or perhaps a singular speaker speaking on behalf of parents—describes reading stories of “monstrous battles” (Line 81) to the children while “they scarcely listened” (Line 84). The adults (still the speaker) would walk along the beach later to discover the children had created “sand moats” (Line 102), showing they had been listening to the stories after all.

The fourth section returns to the two adults—the “I” and the “you” figures—in a room. The first-person speaker observes that “your” (Line 117) wordplay keeps them at “a certain distance” (Line 122). The speaker mentions that the other person’s childhood involved tracing maps and now notices this map-tracing has made its way into the relationship: “[Y]ou trace me / like a country’s boundary” (Lines 146-147).

In section v, the children explore a museum that “was once a fort” (Line 161). The children “especially […] like the guns” (Lines 163-164), which contrasts with their parents walking outside. The guns, once used to defend, are now “in glass cases” (Line 187).

In section vi, the first-person speaker mentions the various games that the other person plays: “the safe game / the orphan game / the ragged winter game” (Lines 197-199) to name a few. This section goes into detail about the waif who lives alone watching other happy families during Christmastime play “parlour / games” (Lines 218-219). The “you” (Line 226) accuses the speaker of playing the waif game, and the speaker acknowledges that may be true.

In section vii, the final section, the two storylines—children and adults—come together, combining the “mirrors of this room” (Line 236) with the children “singing / the same song” (Lines 237-238). The “you” is now in charge of the children’s game, “but there is no joy in it” (Line 258). It becomes clear that the “you” and “I” are a couple, “as we lie / arm in arm” (Lines 259-260), and likely the parents of the playing children. The speaker wants to remove all “prisoning rhythms” (Line 286), “maps” (Line 290), and glass cases” (Line 289) mentioned in prior sections with the final line expressing the urge to break the circle of all the games.