The poems “Lady Lazarus” and “Bitch” were published almost 2 decades apart, both still present a personal challenge from an outside force. But, they differ in the way they handle the battle with their emotions from the effects of the force. In “Lady Lazarus” the speaker had a depressed approach to her emotions while maintaining a feeling of reward and pleasure. In contrast, in “Bitch” the reader had a humorous and often times confused/angry approach to the outside force of her ex-lover. But, Plath’s approach differs from Kizer’s by the way she chooses unordinary words and comparisons to express her innermost feelings. Since many readers may not have experienced something similar to Plath, they are less familiar to emotions and the thoughts …show more content…
But, in “Lady Lazarus” it also contains similes like in lines 39 and 40, “I rocked shut/ as a seashell” (676 ed.8). Throughout the poem, Plath questions the reader in a few lines, symbolizing her uncertainty of emotion. While Kizer maintains a conversation with internal self and her ex-lover, she does not directly address the reader. In “Lady Lazarus” there is many metaphors comparing her feelings for instances, saying her face is like “Jew linen” and her skin is bright as a “Nazi lampshade” (675 ed. 8). Plath was known as “One of the most celebrated controversial of postwar poets writing in English” (Sylvia Plath Poetry Foundation). By using a well-known horrific moment in history, the poem conveys a deeper feeling than it would if comparing a common experience. Plath creates an illusion of an unfamiliar world to many readers that most likely have not experienced such an intense emotion towards suicide like the speaker did. Also, this poem creates a play/theater metaphor when the speaker describes how there is an audience waiting to see such a terrible act of her taking her life. She seems to get pleasure out of the attention she lures in just like in a play, the actor’s purpose is to entertain the audience. Metaphors and similes are used to help explain the thoughts and feelings of the speaker by using a universal object to create a better
Each literary work portrays something different, leaving a unique impression on all who read that piece of writing. Some poems or stories make one feel happy, while others are more solemn. This has very much to do with what the author is talking about in his or her writing, leaving a bit of their heart and soul in the work. F. Scott Fitzgerald, when writing The Great Gatsby, wrote about the real world, yet he didn’t paint a rosy picture for the reader. The same can be said about T.S. Eliot, whose poem “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,” presents his interpretation of hell. Both pieces of writing have many similarities, but the most similar of them all is the tone of each one.
on: April 10th 1864. He was born in 1809 and died at the age of 83 in
As Edgar Allan Poe once stated, “I would define, in brief the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.” The two poems, “Birthday,” and “The Secret Life of Books” use different diction, theme, and perspective to give them a unique identity. Each author uses different literary devices to portray a different meaning.
As the tone changes the perspective of the reader changes as well. There is no clear way to determine whether the speaker is responding to her situation with the appropriate amount of madness or is actually going mad and escaping into her own mind. Plath’s poem shows how a woman 's happiness was defined by her relationship to a man, which is enough to infuriate or drive any woman insane. The speaker struggles to continue her very existence because of her lost love. It is true that the speaker is very emotional and feels things very deeply, but that is not enough to prove that she had lost her mind. By the end of the poem the speaker seems to realize that she is wasting her time waiting on a man. She would rather have a present love that is completely unfathomable than a real love that is not around. The repetition in this poem makes the reader believe this loss is actually causing the speaker to lose her mind, but through changing tones that mirror the emotions anyone would go through in a situation of loss like this the speaker’s response is completely
Robert Burns was a famous writer. He wrote two famous poems called, To a Mouse and To a Louse. In the poem to a Mouse, the mouse's home is destroyed by a plow in the middle of winter. In the poem to a Louse, a lady at church has a louse on her and a man sits there and watches it crawl around on her. These two poems have a deeper meaning than what the author is just writing about. In the poems, To a Mouse and To a Louse by Robert Burns, express three messages.
The Spleen by Anne Finch, the Countess of Winchelsea, presents an interesting poetic illustration of depression in the spleen. The spleen for Finch is an enigma, it is mysterious, shape-shifting, and melancholic. Melancholy leads the subject to flashes of a grander, terrifying emotion: the sublime. The subject of Finch’s Pindaric ode experiences the sublime, and yet has the uncanny ability to reflect and reason on the feeling with acuity--even though the subject suffers from depression, which in effect dulls sensory information. The fact that she intensely perceives the sublime suggests a paradox where dulled senses can produce a penetrative emotional episode. To understand the paradox, the theory of the sublime and Finch’s engagement with the sublime in The Spleen must be traced to conceive the state of the dulled mind in the thrall of an infinite, and transcendent wave of emotion. The focus of this essay is that Finch understands that Dullness, as a by-product of depression, enables rational thought during a sublime experience. Furthermore, she thus illustrates her experience through images where she emphasizes her sensory information and her feelings, which were supposedly numbed by depression. Her feelings, indicated in The Spleen, are the crux to how Finch is able to simultaneously feel numb, and process the sublime.
Sylvia Plath uses a diverse array of stylistic devices in "Lady Lazarus," among them allusion,
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 ...
Plath writes in seven line stanzas. She uses a unique rhyme scheme that changes from in each stanza. Occasionally she isolates one line in order to annunciate its meaning. She also uses enjambment to help stress the meaning of certain lines. Plath also like to use metaphor and simile in her poem. Lines nine and ten she uses simile when she writes, “Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in”. She is stationary in her bed and almost doesn’t want to see everything anymore but she cannot hide what is going on around her.
Many people come from a haunted past, leaving indefinite scars in their memory. This causes permanent numbness in their hearts and leaves them with nothing but isolation from the their loved ones. These damaged memories can later flood the individual causing him/her to create an enemy within themselves. The internal scars within a person stay hidden; however, certain circumstances may draw out he/she hidden past and shows him/her to the world. In “Lady Lazarus” and “Tulips,” Sylvia Plath creates a theme of darkness through imagery of death and sorrow that reveals the sadness she feels due to her haunted past.
In the latter part of the romantic period, Wordsworth, as a part of his lyrical ballads, wrote “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal.” Although not initially intended, the poem eventually became part of a series labeled as the “Lucy Poems.” The five poems, in some way or another, address loss, separation, and their connection to nature. Recent analyses have yielded interesting results in interpreting the poem. Because of the ambiguity present within the lines, varying interpretations have emerged. As it turns out, “A slumber did my spirit seal” is not just a poem, as most people would have it, of a male speaker lamenting the loss of his love Lucy. WHAT IS MY THESIS!
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.
In poems of Sylvia Plath, entitled "Lady Lazarus" and "Daddy" some elements are similar, including used hostile imagery, gloomy atmosphere as well as recurring theme of suicide, but the poems differ in respect of the speaker’s point of view and attitude towards addressed person or unfavorable surroundings. These elements are employed by Plath in order to intensify the impact on her audience and convey all extreme emotions. Another issue that is considered to be worthy of thinking over is the question why the poet refers to Holocaust and the suffering of the Jews in Nazi concentration camps.
Death is inevitable and a lifelong process in every individual’s life. Most importantly, we are unaware of when or how it will happen and, because death can come at a time when we least expect it, it allows some individuals to fear death. In both poems, Lady Lazarus and Daddy, by Sylvia Plath, show different ways to view death. In Lady Lazarus, Plath talks about the characters attempts to commit suicide. Throughout the poem, we discover that the first time she tried to commit suicide was an accident while her second and third time were intentional. While Daddy reveals the process of how a girl came to terms with her father’s death. Although some may assert that the poems show rebirth, both poems reveal death as a way to escape from reality.
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.