Analysis Of Bitch By Sylvia Plath

Carolyn Kizer mentions at the end that his friends are “well-groomed pets” unlike the speaker. Plath dehumanizes the speaker by comparing herself to a cat that had nine lives. The poem also contains internal monologue between the speaker and her inner bitch while there is external dialogue from her and her ex-lover. These components are major when discussing the meanings of each poem.

The tone of the poems have a similar negative connotation but in “Bitch” the speaker changes the tone from angry then to depressed back to angry. On the other hand, “Lady Lazarus” has a complex tone that includes pride, self-loathing, and critical of others by taking morbid pleasure in the “show” she created. When the speaker in “Bitch” first notices her ex-lover,

Sylvia Plath created her title from her “long standing interest in the biblical story of Lazarus that peaked after her first attempt of suicide in 1953” and she felt like she “had been on the other side of life like Lazarus"(Plath’s LADY LAZARUS). Unlike the story “Lazarus” which uses the power for good, “Lady Lazarus” struggles to rise up over the cruel deity. Just like in “Lazarus” when Jesus has risen him from the dead, a similar belief is shown in “Lady Lazarus” after she was able to survive her near-death suicide attempts. In the poem “Bitch”, the title holds the meaning of a female dog and the male use of the word. It also shows in the title a “truly felt sense of belittlement confronts demeaning male name-calling.”(Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Ed.) Often times, males use this generalized term to describe an overbearing or unpleasant women. Since Kizer is a feminist, she included this definition to associate the male-dominant world of the 1950’s that she wanted to put an end to. The speaker refers to her inner-self as a bitch using both denotations to describe the dog-like overbearing emotions that she receives from the conversation with her