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Struggles of Sylvia Plath in the poem daddy
Struggles of Sylvia Plath in the poem daddy
Essays on sylvia plath
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“Morning Song” is a poem that was written by Sylvia Plath and published shortly after her death in 1965. It is a poem that openly expresses the depression she was going through leading to the events that caused her death. The poem represents the hope a baby brings to the world and the effect it has on his/her mother. It is a lyric poem that contains eighteen lines and six stanzas. Plath uses imagery, tone, metaphor to convey the impact a new life has on not only the world but on her as well. Born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts, Sylvia Plath was a daughter to Aurelia Schober and Otto Plath. Sylvia had to experience the tragedy of having to grow up without a father having lost him to diabetes when she was only eight years old.
“Morning song” was one she wrote in lyric style and separated into six stanzas. It has been thought that Plath was experimenting with a French Style love poem. Each stanza contains three lines with no rhyme scheme. These stanzas are also known as tercets (Keyes). Each stanza has almost a different meaning and a different element in it giving it a unique style of reading and understanding to it (Overview: ‘morning song’). Having wrote it the way she did allowed for her to fully express how she felt in each line. Some lines being short and some being longer each line has a significant
In the first stanza she describes the child’s way of crying as “bald” as the baby was first coming into life and describing that his cry is as of that of earth’s elements. She then goes on and describes that the parents voice intensifies the babies cries. It gives a sense that there is only two parents and a newborn baby in a small room and at that moment all three were going to be together for life. “Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen: A far sea moves in my ear.” She describes the child’s cry or “song” as the sound of a sea which is pleasing to her ear (poets). However there is imagery that convey the separation she felt from the child. She describes herself as a “cow’ when getting to attend to the Child’s cry. The line that expresses this the most strongly and freely is when she states “I’m no more your mother”. This shows that she does not feel a bond with the baby. It insist that a mother who has just gave birth to a child has to adjust and overcome the fear of having to care for a life that they are now responsible for. She tries to free herself of the responsibility by saying “…Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow”. She tries to uses this to explain how distant she feels from the child. Like that of a cloud being carried away by the
Stanza one is set in the morning at breakfast time. It involves the mother and her child. Instead of the usual loving mother, we see a cold mother and one that is doubtful of her lover for her own child. Dawe uses cold language such as ‘beneficence’, ‘beamed’ and ‘laminex’ as well has the pause after ‘she loves him’ to signify this. The pair are also conveyed to be separate from each other, symbolised by them being on opposite sides of the breakfast table.
The first two stanzas, lines 1-10, tell the readers that Plath, for thirty years, has been afraid of her father, so scared that she dares not to “breathe or Achoo.” She has been living in fear, although she announces that he’s already dead. It is obvious that she believes that her father continues to control her life from the grave. She says that she “has had to kill” him, but he’s already dead, indicating her initial promise to forget him. She calls him a “bag full of God,” telling us that she considers her father a very strong, omnipotent being, someone who is superior in her eyes.
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.
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).
Emily Dickinson is regarded as “America’s most original poet” and was born on December 10th, 1830 (CITATION1). During her life, she spent most of her time alone in her house, spending time with only herself and writing poetry. When she died at the age of fifty-five, her sister decided to publish the 1,800 poems Emily had written. Before her death, Emily had only published ten of her poems. Because of this, she was not widely known before she died, unlike Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath, on the other hand, is a well-known author and poet. She even won the Pulitzer Prize award for Poetry in 1982 (CITATION2). Sylvia was similar to Emily Dickinson in that she was not an outgoing person. In fact, she was often depressed, and eventually took her own life in 1963 (CITATION3). While unfortunate, Sylvia Plath had written many popular poems, such as “Daddy”, short stories, and a semi-autobiographical novel called “The Bell Jar”.
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.
Although the little girl doesn’t listen to the mother the first time she eventually listens in the end. For example, in stanzas 1-4, the little girl asks if she can go to the Freedom March not once, but twice even after her mother had already denied her the first time. These stanzas show how the daughter is a little disobedient at first, but then is able to respect her mother’s wishes. In stanzas 5 and 6, as the little girl is getting ready the mother is happy and smiling because she knows that her little girl is going to be safe, or so she thinks. By these stanzas the reader is able to tell how happy the mother was because she thought her daughter would be safe by listening to her and not going to the March. The last two stanzas, 7 and 8, show that the mother senses something is wrong, she runs to the church to find nothing, but her daughter’s shoe. At this moment she realizes that her baby is gone. These stanzas symbolize that even though her daughter listened to her she still wasn’t safe and is now dead. The Shoe symbolizes the loss the mother is going through and her loss of hope as well. This poem shows how elastic the bond between the daughter and her mother is because the daughter respected her mother’s wish by not going to the March and although the daughter is now dead her mother will always have her in her heart. By her having her
Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” emphasizes the ill-fated relationship between a woman and her deceased father. The speaker conveys her paradoxical feelings for the one man who she worshipped during her young years, but feared his malicious influence and domination after his death. “I used to pray to recover you” and “at twenty I tried to die… and get back… to you” ( line 14, 63-64). Throughout the poem, Plath uses simplistic language, rhyme, and rhythm in order to charm and delay the malevolent spirits from her father.
"Sylvia Plath poem written two weeks before she died reveals 'disturbed' state of mind." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 30 Apr. 2013. Web. 1 June 2014.
Plath’s works were known for their extremely feminist and suicidal themes. Plath wrote about whatever came to her mind and used writing as a way to express her feelings. Plath is credited with furthering the genre of confessional poetry. Plath was also the first poet to receive the Pulitzer Prize after death. Although Plath had taken her life, her legacy still lives on in many ways.
...lmsheimer, Lonna M. "Sylvia Plath." American Writers. Ed. Leonard Unger, A. Walton. Litz, Molly Weigel, and Jay Parini. Supplement 1 Part 2. New York: Scribner, 1974. 526-49. Print.
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 was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer who suffered from depression. The death of her father, when she was only eight years old, was what triggered her depression. And because of that, most of her work revolve around the death of her father and her attempts of suicide. In her poem Lady Lazarus is about her attempts of suicide and how she feels about death. This theme of death and suicide can also be seen in the poems Daddy, which is about her deceased father, and Edge which is about a person who is about to commit suicide. Sylvia plath´s poetry centrally tends to discuss suicide and death as the main subject, which can be exemplified by the poem Lady Lazarus.
If Sylvia Plath lived in the era of Aristotle or Plato, or even Horace or Longinus, these entire great names might not even take a second glance of her poem because all the four hold different perspectives of art and literature. The critics from Plato to Shklovsky might all treat the poem differently. Plato makes the feeling artist important. He addresses authenticity in a work of art, otherwise artist not having experienced what he writes about, would be a liar. Aristotle emphasized credulity, consistency, and emotional identification of the reader to the work of art. Horace and Longinus talk of moral, aesthetic experience and effect of and intention of the work. However, Shlovsky, the one who introduce the term of defamiliarization sees art for innovation, in language as well as form, and seeks to bring poetry into the realm of science and emphasizes technique. He wants poetry to shock the readers into true perception. Plath has managed to do that. Her poem hardly fits in the conception of what a poem should be as envisioned by the Aristotle, Plato, Horace and Longinus. The way s...
October 27, 1932 is the exact date that the one and only Sylvia Plath was born on. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She kept a journal of her poetic work that she started at an early age. As she grew older and wiser, she worked at Mademoiselle magazine as a guest editor while she was attending college. She found her self in a rough obstacle during that time and tried to take her life by overdosing on sleeping pills. After getting the proper treatment at a mental health facility, she went back to school to finish her degree in 1955. “Plath herself had suffered a serious breakdown and attempted suicide between her junior and senior years in college”(Baym). She met Ted Hughes, who she married in 1956, at Cambridge University in England.