Depression and pain leads to suicide. Sylvia Plath, a modern poet, was a master of allusion and imagery. Plath dedicated her life to poetry. It is heartbreaking that we lost a talented soul at such a young age but her work will live for eternity.
Sylvia Plath was born October 27th 1932 to Otto and Aurelia Plath. She was raised in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Otto, emigrated from Germany at the age of 15 and soon became a professor at Boston University. Aurelia, Plath’s mother, was also a teacher but she gave that life up once Sylvia was born. Constantakis explains how Otto Plath died from diabetes when Sylvia was only eight and how most of her poetry focuses on her relationship with her father. Plath spent most of time as a child with her younger brother Warren. She was very dedicated to school and always received high grades and awards for her intelligence. September of 1950, Plath began her freshman year at Smith College in Massachusetts. At the end of her third year, she was named guest managing editor of Mademoiselle and given a month’s “working vacation” in New York. After returning from New York, she suffered a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide in 1953 of August by swallowing sleeping pills according to Constantakis. She was hospitalized for awhile and returned to Smith for her senior year in February, 1954. Plath sailed to England after receiving her scholarship to study at Newham College, Cambridge University.
After spending her Christmas break of first semester touring London and Paris, she met Ted Hughes at a party on February 25th, 1956. Ted and Sylvia were married on June 16th, 1956 in London. She completed her year of study in 1957 and then sailed to the United States with Ted to become an English profes...
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Sylvia Plath showed interest in writing at a very early age. Plath published her first poem when she was eight years old. Sylvia Plath continued writing and published numerous stories and poems before the age of twenty. After graduation in 1950, Plath received the Olive Higgins Prouty Scholarship from Smith College (Smithipedia). At the private college, Plath managed to excel in school and write over four hundred poems while suffering from depression (allpoetry). It was at Smith College, where she attempted her first suicide. Plath graduated from the school in 1955 and moved to Cambridge, England to continue her studies (AAoP).
Aurelia Schober, Plath’s mother, was studying at Boston University when she fell in love with her professor that taught German and biology, Otto Plath, whom she would marry in January 1932. Later in that same year on October 27, Plath was born to the couple. Plath’s father passed away when she was only eight. (Academy of American Poets) From then on, Plath began publishing her poems. In everything she did, she strived towards being flawless; she had straight A’s, was a good daughter, and earned prestigious prizes (Gilson). Schober aided in pushing her daughter towards excellence and always made sure Plath knew how proud she was of her. In fact, Sylvia’s mother collected her daughter’s achievements and praised her highly for them (Liukkonen). By 1950, she had been given a scholarship to attend Smith College and had hundreds of publications, which she would add to substantially in the time she spent at Smith (Gilson).
Poetry is the wind for a trapped and wounded soul. A great example of a wounded soul is, Sylvia Plath. She was an immaculate poet, who expressed her personal troubles through writing. As Plath’s life smouldered into a heap of dust at the age of 30, her poetry grew and bloomed. In the years before her death, her most troubled period, Plath penned three of her most well-known poems, “Daddy”, “Lady Lazarus” and “Tulips”—all three illustrating the horrors of despair with strong, expressive literary devices. Plath, who committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30, has been hailed ubiquitously as one of the most acclaimed and preeminent poets of the 21st century. Plath’s poetry was influenced by tragic events in her life and her prolonged battle against her deep depression and obsession with death. Plath’s personal issues made her the definition of a confessional poet. In the poems, “Daddy”, “Tulips”, and “Lady Lazarus”, Plath confesses her emotional and nervous breakdowns during her endless depression.
Sylvia Plath, a great American author, focuses mostly on actual experiences. Plath’s poetry displays feelings and emotions. Plath had the ability to transform everyday happenings into poems or diary entries. Plath had a passion for poetry and her work was valued. She was inspired by novelists and her own skills. Her poetry was also very important to readers and critics. Sylvia Plath’s work shows change throughout her lifetime, relates to feelings and emotions, and focuses on day to day experiences.
Plath was born in the seaside town of Winthrop, Massachusetts during the year of 1932. In her first eight years of life, Plath was troubled with the birth of a new sibling, the death of a parent, and the start of a war. These eight years were the calm before the stormy life of Sylvia Plath. As an only child, Plath felt threatened by the new baby in the family. Her new sibling, Warren, sparked a disdain for children that Plath would harbor for the rest of her life. In 1940, Plath’s father died and essentially robbed the children of a proper relationship with their mourning mother. The family moved inland where Plath focused on writing poetry until she began to attend Smith College in 1950.
Born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, Sylvia Plath was the daughter of Otto and Aurelia Plath. Growing up during the Great Depression, the family lived under Mr. Plath's care until he became sick with diabetes, dying shortly after Sylvia's eighth birthday. In spite of her father's death, Plath's childhood seemed to have been relatively mere (Austin). It is said that, “Sylvia conformed to the notion of the model child--excelling in school and whatever intellectual activities interested her, being docile and responsive to her family's wishes, and aiming steadily for honors and success in the American tradition of the 1950s” (Wanger). However, beneath the surface of her seeming perfection laid some grave troublesome problems, brought on by the death of her father. To rid some of the stress because of the recent death in the Plath’s life, Aurelia moved the family to Wellesley, Massachusetts. Aurelia enrolled Sylvia in a new school, feeling that studying and being with children Sylvia’s age would console her (Alexander 21). On the contrary it is said that, “Sylvia was still confused and angry about her father’s death…Her strong and conflicting emotions of love, hate, anger and grief at the loss of her father were to affect Sylvia for the rest of her life” (A...
Sylvia Plath was the daughter of Aurelia Schober and Otto Plath. Her mother was a teacher at Boston University and her father was a Bee Entomologist. She had one brother named Warren. Sylvia Plath began writing at a very young at the age of eight. She submitted her first poem into the children’s section of the Boston Herald in 1941. The poem was named “Point Shirley” this story was about the description of her grandparents’ house when she moved to Point Shirley, Massachusetts. A week after she turned eight, her father died on November 5, 1940 due to untreated diabetes after his foot was amputated. She then turned to her writing and sealed herself off from society. She became depressed and tired to commit suicide. She later wrote the poem “Daddy” in 1962, to describe what she thought of her dad.
"About." Personal Blog, n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2015. [When finding an explanation for the similarities between the writers, it is important to play close attention to biographies. In case the psychoeconomic factors that Ruonco describes are true, then biography constitutes most of the development of the Sylvia Plath affliction. Moreover, the biography provides an insight into the views of the author for a better and more accurate understanding of her poetry. Furthermore, it is imperative to use her auto-statement since she referres to her "muse" as something out of her control which can be traced to Kaufman's
The primary meaning of the poem ‘Mushrooms’ is a story of the reproduction of the mushroom, from conception to birth. The mushrooms creation is described step by step throughout the poem, from its conception in the first stanza, to its ‘birth’ in stanza six. The conception of the mushroom is described as ‘whitely, discretely, very quietly’ by Plath which makes the poem feel very soft and gentle to the reader suggests that the conception is a very nice and peaceful thing. The poem continues on describing the mushroom in various stages of development and finally, in the last stanza, states that they shall ‘inherit the earth’ which suggests the unseen power of the spores that have been described in the first ten stanzas. The surface meaning of the poem is one of the growth of the mushroom and the power it holds.
Sylvia Plath’s life was full of disappointment, gloominess and resentment. Her relationship status with her parents was hostile and spiteful, especially with her father. Growing up during World War II did not help the mood of the nation either, which was dark and dreary. At age 8 Plath’s father of German ancestry died of diabetes and even though their relationship was never established nor secure, his death took a toll on her. “For Sylvia, who had been his favorite, it was an emotional holocaust and an experience from which she never fully recovered” (Kehoe 90). Since she was so young she never got to work out her unsettled feelings with him. Even at age eight, she hid when he was around because she was fearful of him. When she was in his presence his strict and authoritarian figure had left an overpowering barrier between their relationship. Sadly enough by age eight Plath instead of making memories with her dad playing in the yard she resented him and wanted nothing to do with him (Kehoe). These deep-seated feelings played a major role in Plath’s poetry writings. Along with his “hilterian figure,” her father’s attitude towards women was egotistical and dismissive, uncondemning. This behavior infuriated Plath; she was enraged about the double standard behavior towards women. Plath felt controlled in male-dominated world (Lant). “Because Plath associates power so exclusively with men, her conviction that femininity is suffocating and inhibiting comes as no surprise” (Lant 631). This idea of a male-dominated world also influenced Plath’s writing. Unfortunately, Plath married a man just like her father Ted Hughes. “Hughes abandonment apparently stirred in her the memories and feelings she had struggled with when her ...
Dickie, Margaret. 1979 Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Urbana: the University of Illinois Press. [http://www.usm.maine.edu/~jkuenz/391/lazarus.htm, accessed 6 May 2007]
According to “Sylvia Plath” Sylvia Plath struggled with severe depression throughout her life. She first experienced depression during her third year of college because of insecurities and self-esteem issues. Furthermore, Plath’s troubled marriage with Ted Hughes fueled her depression later in life; he had cheated on her with a younger woman and left her to raise their two children. Once again, she was overcome by self-esteem issues and anxiety that led her down a dark path. Plath attempted suicide three times, and she succeeded on her third attempt at the age of thirty. She died
Sylvia Plath, an innocent scarred by her memories, shares her story through her considerably dark poems. On October 27, 1932 in
The poetry of Sylvia Plath can be interpreted psychoanalytically. Sigmund Freud believed that the majority of all art was a controlled expression of the unconscious. However, this does not mean that the creation of art is effortless; on the contrary it requires a high degree of sophistication. Works of art like dreams have both a manifest content (what is on the surface) and latent content (the true meaning). Both dreams and art use symbolism and metaphor and thus need to be interpreted to understand the latent content. It is important to maintain that analyzing Plaths poetry is not the same as analyzing Plath; her works stand by themselves and create their own fictional world. In the poems Lady Lazarus, Daddy and Electra on Azalea Path the psychoanalytic motifs of sadomasochism, regression and oral fixation, reperesnet the desire to return to the incestuous love object.
Plath’s father died early in her life leaving her with unresolved feelings, and this brought a lot of troubles later on in life. Sylvia was a great student but when she was overwhelmed with disappointments after a month in New York, she attempted suicide (“Sylvia Plath”). After receiving treatment and recovering, she returned to school and later moved to England where she met her future husband, Ted Hughes (“Sylvia Plath”). Their marriage with two children didn’t last when Ted had an affair. They separated and Ted moved in with the new woman, leaving Sylvia and their two children. Battling depression during this time, Sylvia soon ended her life. She left behind numerous writings that many might see as signs of her depression and suicide attempts.