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Theme of death in the poems of sylvia plath and emily
Psychological analysis of sylvia plath poems
Imagery in sylvia plath
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These five poems by Sylvia Plath are all connected by the theme of death, self-loathing, and by the presence of historical and magical concepts. Sylvia Plath uses very powerfully charged imagery of controversial and emotional topics in order to best describe her own life. Most of the poems reflect her own personal life, including the events that she has experienced and, more appropriately, the relationships and emotions that she has felt. Every single one of these five poems uses the word “dead” and the topic of death itself is prevalent in some manner. Of particular interest is the presence of her relationship with her deceased father, and her own reluctance to let go of his memory. Plath's poetry reflects her own self-loathing and disregard for her own existence. Her poems often mention her own attempts at suicide, in addition to her personal experiences with trying to get rid of her suicidal desires. In each of her poems she evokes the images of historical and mythical creatures and concepts linked with the religious and the supernatural. In addition, her poems can be connected by the idea of being held back or held down by some sort of feeling, either of desire for a loved one, escape from mortal existence or of a fantasy world.
In the poem “The Colossus”, Plath is reflecting on her relationship with her father. She depicts him as a giant statue of sorts that has broken into pieces that, despite her efforts, she can never piece back together. This poem reflects her inability to let go of her father despite him being dead for most of her life; she's thirty years old at the time. In one particular line, she says, “Thirty years now I have labored / To dredge the silt from your throat. / I am none the wiser.” (Plath 48-49) The t...
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Plath, Sylvia. "Balloons." Introduction to English Literature. Comp. Trent University Department of English. Toronto: Canadian Scholars, 2010. Print.
Plath, Sylvia. "Cut." Introduction to English Literature. Comp. Trent University Department of English. Toronto: Canadian Scholars, 2010. Print.
Plath, Sylvia. "Daddy." Introduction to English Literature. Comp. Trent University Department of English. Toronto: Canadian Scholars, 2010. Print.
Plath, Sylvia. "Lady Lazarus." Introduction to English Literature. Comp. Trent University Department of English. Toronto: Canadian Scholars, 2010. Print.
Plath, Sylvia. "The Colossus." Introduction to English Literature. Comp. Trent University Department of English. Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press Inc., 2010. Print.
Webster's English Dictionary. Canadian. Toronto: Strathearn Books Limited, 2006. Print.
Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents were Otto and Aurelia Plath. Plath's father, Otto, immigrated to America from Germany when he was just sixteen years old. He wanted to study ministry at the Northwestern College, which was a small Lutheran school. According to his wife, Aurelia, Otto changed his ambitions because he didn't feel a true "calling" for the ministry. He received a master of the arts from Washington University, and the doctor of science from Harvard. After that, in 1928, he became a biology professor at Boston University. Sylvia's mother, Aurelia, taught German and English at Brookline High School until January of 1932, when she married Otto. She quit teaching because Otto wanted her to be a homemaker. Otto and Aurelia settled in Winthrop, a town near Boston, where Sylvia spent most of her early childhood. Aurelia's immigrant parents from Australia also lived in this town.
There is no shortage of media encouraging adolescents to ‘be themselves’, promoting self-worth regardless as to what others think. While many may be fed this message throughout music and film, rarely ever is it conveyed to actually have a lasting effect on one’s personal views quite like Sylvia Plath’s “Initiation”. Although formulaic, Plath’s uniquely optimistic short story warns against an obsession with belonging, and explores the importance of individuality through the protagonist Millicent Arnold’s gradual character development, from a self-conscious teenage girl to a stronger and more confident individual.
It tends to be the trend for women who have had traumatic childhoods to be attracted to men who epitomize their emptiness felt as children. Women who have had unaffectionate or absent fathers, adulterous husbands or boyfriends, or relatives who molested them seem to become involved in relationships with men who, instead of being the opposite of the “monsters” in their lives, are the exact replicas of these ugly men. Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” is a perfect example of this unfortunate trend. In this poem, she speaks directly to her dead father and her husband who has been cheating on her, as the poem so indicates.
In “The Colossus” Plath expresses her personal and emotions struggles she faced resulting from her father’s death. Plath’s father, Otto Plath was nonexistent. “Plath’s relationship with her father has proven to be one of the more troublesome of her recurrent themes in this respect. By all accounts, including her own, Otto Plath was a kind, loving father, if formal and somewhat remote, and there was little outward evidence that their relationship was troubled” (John Rietz 417). Plath yearned for the everlasting love that she never received from her father growing up. It’s almost as if she was constantly trying to force building a relationship that she never had with her father. “Otto Plath was her muse” (417). This notion is best represented in Plath’s poem, “The Colossus” by the speaker’s constant efforts to reconstruct the fallen Colossus of Rhodes representing her relationship with her...
Sylvia Plath a highly acclaimed twentieth century American poet whose writings were mostly influenced by her life experiences. Her father died shortly after her eighth birthday and her first documented attempt at suicide was in her early twenties. She was married at age twenty-three and when she discovered her husband was having an affair she left him with their two children. Her depression and the abandonment she felt as a child and as a woman is what inspires most of her works. Daddy is a major decision point where Plath decides to overcome her father’s death by telling him she will no longer allow his memory to control her.
Two of the most popular poets of the 19th and 20th centuries are Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, respectively. These women were born nearly one hundred years apart, but their writing is strikingly similar, especially through the use of the speaker. In fact, in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy”, she writes about her father and compares him to domineering figures, such as Adolf Hitler, a teacher, and a vampire; and in Emily Dickinson’s poem “She dealt her pretty words like blades—“, she talks about bullies and how they affect a person’s life—another domineering figure. Despite being born in different centuries, Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath are parallel in a multitude of ways, such as their choice in story, their choice for themes, and their choice of and as a narrator.
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.
The highly recognized female novelist and poet, Sylvia Plath, lived a hard and tragic life. Plath was diagnosed with depression, a mood disorder that causes consistent feelings of sadness, at a very young age that made her life complicated in many ways. The battle continued on when she was diagnosed with severe depression later on in life which contributed to her death. Sylvia Plath was a very successful novelist and poet in the thirty short years of her life, however, the achievements were not enough to mask her depression battle that ran and ended her life.
Plath employs a shift to accentuate a change in time. The speaker of the poem says “I am silver and exact/Now I am a lake” (1, 10) to indicate an alteration in time. The purpose of the device is to convey an adjustment in c...
In the poem, “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath shows her character to have a love for her father as well as an obvious sense of resentment and anger towards him. She sets the tone through the structure of the poem along with her use of certain diction, imagery, and metaphors/similes. The author, Sylvia Plath, chooses words that demonstrate the characters hatred and bitterness towards the oppression she is living with under the control of her father and later, her husband. Plath’s word choice includes many words that a child might use. There is also an integration of German words which help set the tone as well. She creates imagery through her use of metaphors and similes which allow the reader to connect certain ideas and convey the dark, depressing tone of the poem.
Throughout the poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath, the author struggles to escape the memory of her father who died when she was only ten years old. She also expresses anger at her husband, Ted Hughes, who abandoned her for another woman. The confessional poem begins with a series of metaphors about Plath's father which progress from godlike to demonic. Near the end, a new metaphor emerges, when the author realizes that her estranged husband is actually the vampire of her dead father, sent to torture her. This hyperbole is central to the meaning of the poem. Lines 75-76 express a hope that they will stop oppressing her: "Daddy, you can lie back now / There ís a stake in your fat black heart." She concludes that her father can return to the grave, because she has finally rid herself of the strain he had caused her, by killing his vampire form. Despite this seeming closure, however, we will see that the author does not overcome her trauma.
Death is a prevalent theme in the poetry of both Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson. They both examine death from varied angles. There are many similarities as well as differences in the representation of this theme in their poetry. Plath views death as a sinister and intimidating end, while Dickinson depicts death with the endearment of romantic attraction. In the poetry of Plath death is depicted traditionally, while Dickinson attributes some mysticism to the end of life.
Through her dark and intense poetry, Sylvia Plath left an eternal mark on the literary community. Her personal struggles with depression, insecurities, and suicidal thoughts influenced her poetry and literary works. As a respected twentieth century writer, Sylvia Plath incorporated various literary techniques to intensify her writing. Her use of personification, metaphors, and allusions in her poems “Ariel,” “Lady Lazarus,” and “Edge”, exemplifies her talent as a poet and the influence her own troubled life had on her poetry.
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.