Fear-vs-Justice
Have you ever been in a situation where you had something horrible happen in
your life that you needed to do something about, but in order to do something about it, you
had to confront the problem and that caused you pain and more troubles? I believe that to
be the underlying conflict in Adrienne Rich's "Rape". The main character who the
speaker is talking to first is a woman who has been sexually violated. She is a victim of a
heinous and very private, embarrassing crime. The officer that she has reported her
situation to is a policeman who patrols her area and who her family knows and trust. Her
family is very close to this officer, for "he comes from your block, grew up with your
brothers.(2)" She doesn't know him that well though, which makes her telling him about
the incident that much more painful and uncomfortable. She gives him all the details of
the crime and about her assailant. She has the idea that the cop may have been her rapist.
The woman has a certain bit of suspicion about the officer, but she is not sure. "Rape" is a
poem about a woman who is reporting a case of rape to a policeman who may just be the
criminal responsible for the offense himself.
The violated woman isn't convinced that the policeman is the rapist, but the
speaker defiantly suspects him. The rape victim knows very little about the criminal in
question, so the speaker tells the reader about the incident, the evidence, and about enough
facts to let them come up with there own suspect. The first statement made by the speaker
is "There is a cop who is both prowler and father.(1)" When he says "prowler" the reader
automatically considers the officer to be a suspect, even before any background is given on
him. This is a very important line in the poem. It expresses that the policeman is both a
prowler and a father figure. He is sup...