“Harsh” and “brutal” are adjectives not often used when speaking of poetry. Be that as it may, there simply are no other words for Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus”. Readers can be, and often are, repulsed by the gruesome imagery (“Soon, soon the flesh/The grave cave ate will be/At home on me”) and offended by the numerous references to the Holocaust (“A sort of walking miracle, my skin/Bright as a Nazi lampshade). Plath’s aggressive metaphors are difficult for many first time readers as are the themes of death, resurrection and vengeance. Driving the whole narrative forward is the transformation Plath’s persona undergoes, while exploring these themes.
From the title, which alludes to the biblical character, Lazarus, we know this will be a poem about resurrection and rebirth, specifically that of Plath’s persona, Lady Lazarus, a young woman (And I a smiling woman/I am only thirty) with a propensity for suicide (“I guess you could say I’ve a call.”)
We begin to get a sense of who Lady Lazarus is in the fourth stanza: “Peel off the napkin/O my enemy./Do I terrify?” This persona is a ...
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.
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 may be one of the most remarkable and idolized modern poets of the twentieth century. Sylvia Plath had an emotional life, and a troublesome past with her father's death, insecurities because of self-doubt, a tragic break up with her husband and severe depression, leading to her suicide in 1963. These tragic events in Plath’s life played a vast part in her career as a poet and novelist, by inspiring her to create her melancholy and notorious masterpieces.
Giles, Richard F. “Sylvia Plath.” Magill’s Critical Survey of Poetry. Ed. Frank N. Magill, b. 1875. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1992.
In 1965, Plath’s poem , “Lady Lazarus,” was published; which was a brutal and
looked at it so long I think it is part of my heartâ?¦Faces and darkness
The first thought that encroaches upon the woman's daydreams and darkens the atmosphere is that of a solemn "procession of the dead" to Palestine. Her interaction with the procession is interesting because it symbolizes the journey she is making in her mind and sets the tone for later religious questioning in the poem.
Lady Lazarus The theme we see as soon as the poem starts is persecution. For example, in the very beginning of the poem she is very down on herself when she says “One year in every ten/ I manage it” (2-3). Lady Lazarus is showing us that she has been able to overcome the people and obstacles in her way.
In the New Testament of the Bible, Lazarus is a man who rises from the dead at the command of Jesus Christ (John 11:38). The title of this poem, "Lady Lazarus"(the "Lady" without a doubt referring to Plath herself, as this is an example of confessional poetry; the "Lazarus" being an allusion to the biblical figure) is an accurate indicator of the content of the poem. "Lady Lazarus" is about Plath's third attempt at suicide, and her subsequent 'resurrection'. In lines 65-79, Plath develops the speaker's contempt for the doctors who brought her back to life. Through this, Plath develops the character's paranoia.
The death of her father also acts as a key factor to the beginning of her depression. The numbness in her heart leaves a space full of loneliness longing to be filled. This void space in her heart is then consumed by the motives of suicide, which stands as the main influence of “Lady Lazarus.” Between the sudden death of her father and the cheating acts of her husband, Sylvia has many heart-breaking influences to write this poem.
She uses this allusion to draw parallels to her past two suicide attempts that she survived. “My face a featureless, fine/ Jew linen” (7-9) and “them unwrap me hand and foot--/ the big strips tease.” (27-28), are examples of the Lazarus allusion because Lazarus crawled out of his tomb covered in linen strips and cloth when he was resurrected. Another allusion, which references Sylvia Plath's third suicide attempt, is shown in lines 20-22: “I am only thirty./ And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three.”(20-22). These lines allude to a specific event in Sylvia Plath’s life, her suicide, that was foreshadowed through her writing. Another poem, “Edge”, written by Sylvia Plath is heavily influenced by her troubled life and is rich with literary
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.
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.