Analysis Of Sylvia Plath's Metaphors

“Metaphors” by Sylvia Plath is a poem about what it’s like to be a pregnant woman. When a woman is carrying a child, the world looks at her differently. Some may say that is a good thing, but for Plath not so much. Plath doesn’t strictly write out anything in this poem. As the title reads, it’s all a metaphor that the reader has to decipher. This poem is describes the end of a pregnancy, when a woman feels the worst. The narrator feels as if the child she is carrying is the true value, not herself who is carrying the baby.

The second line of the poem states “An elephant, a ponderous house,” referring to the size of her belly and also the other things that tend to get larger while with child (Metaphors). Of course we know that pregnant women

It seems as if you can picture a large, uncomfortable pregnant woman about that looks and feels as if she is about to go into labor. Pregnancy is supposed to be a beautiful thing that happens to women, but at the same time it can be a painful experience as well, mentally and physically. Line 5 states “This loaf’s bog with its yeasty rising.” This is a symbol of the developing child inside her, as it is making the mother get bigger and “swell.” Plath uses some comical images and word choices in this poem.

The number nine in this poem is a symbolic number and is featured a lot. She says in the first line, “I’m a riddle in nine syllables,” which symbolizes the nine months of pregnancy. The poem itself has nine lines, and the title itself has nine letters. When Plath talks about “nine syllables” she is also referring to how she is going to make all of the lines go by the nine syllable pattern. Plath couldn’t have picked a better title for this poem. Metaphors appear throughout the whole poem. A metaphor is defined as an implicit comparison of unlike objects, using the dissimilarity of objects to create the frisson of the comparison (Glossary). Nothing is pointed out clearly, you have to think about what she is trying to say. She also uses a lot of negative metaphors in this

This sounds as if she is, once again, large but also uncomfortable. But if we think about this a little harder, Plath seems as if she is being used. She feels as if she is just a stage in someone else’s master plan. When the line states that she is a cow in a calf is probably the most obvious metaphor in the entire poem. This is the line that states that the poem is clearly about a pregnant woman. If you think about an actual cow, most of the time on a farm they are used only for milk or meat. So once again, the woman feels as if she is just being used. To think about death and birth all in the same sentence seems a little cruel, but Plath finds a way to connect the two with figurative