Within “Tulips” and “A Birthday Present”, Sylvia Plath explores the critical decision of choosing between life and death. Through her inclusion of rhetorical devices, the personification of common-day objects symbolize the return to existence and biblical allusions mock the salvation others receive through religious means. Written in the last few months of her life, the two poems showcase the battle between consciousness and death and while it may seem easier to lose oneself in the bland darkness, the two extremities are frighteningly close. Primarily, in Plath’s poems, personification brings inanimate objects to life in order to create a distinction between the speaker’s past lifestyle and the present one she is struggling to escape from …show more content…
The inclusion of both objects as each poem’s respective titles also draw out each article’s message as it is the first word the reader looks at. In “A Birthday Present”, the present itself is shrouded in mystery, but its sinister characterizations lure Plath in with its “black eye-pits and a scar” (line 6). While the poem continues, the relationship between the present and its symbolism for death becomes increasingly apparent especially in the last 7 stanzas where it is unclear whether Plath is describing the present or death itself. In the lines, “It stands at my window, big as the sky. It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center…”, the present, death, attempts to grab Plath away and to lift the “veil” mentioned multiple times throughout the poem which is the thin layer separating her from the underworld. The irony in the situation is that while it is Plath’s birthday, she wishes for a gift of death, in order to make her feel reborn again. The animated present and situation reflects Plath’s theme that the association between life and death is of a closer proximity than is generally measured. On the other hand, “Tulips” personifies the object in the perspective opposite of the one seen in “A Birthday Present”. …show more content…
While “Birthday Present” refers to Biblical events, “Tulips” centers more on the actions Christians perform, such as “communion” (line 35), and baptism referenced in line 27. The religious allusions in “Birthday Present” are also in a closer accordance with Jesus’ life, notably marking his birth through the Virgin Mary’s “annunciation” (line 9) and his death at the “last supper” (line 26). Through these allusions, Plath’s tone is one of scorn and disbelief, using them to guide her own ironic actions of wanting death for a birthday present. As many people turn towards religion as hope for a new life, Plath’s rejection of those sources emphasizes her resolve on not turning back, as seen in her suicide in 1963. This draws attention on Plath’s message of paying attention to both extremities in life and death and weighing the costs and benefits before solidifying one’s decision. Likewise in “Tulips”, the focus on the physical actions believers perform doesn’t necessarily mark their strength in faith. Plath, noting that she strives to “lie with [her] hands turned up and be utterly empty”, is referencing Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, but in terms of the reverse as she wants to be reborn through death. The reference to the baptism and communion tablet
Within Birthday Letters, there is a rich dialectic that is not evident in the other texts. Dark melancholic thoughts such as in ‘The Dogs Are Eating Your Mother’ where Hughes says “I buried her where she fell” shows his bitter sadness. Thoughts such as these battle against bright love, as they both shape and affect each other, competing in a mutual and dynamic way. The poetry collection produced by Plath at the time. ‘Ariel’ may be a source allowing further understanding of the relationship. Within her poem ‘Lady Lazarus’, Plath presents herself as a “phoenix” stating “I eat men like air”. In this first meeting, she bites him and scars him. Evidently, this hints how th...
In “The Colossus” Plath expresses her personal and emotions struggles she faced resulting from her father’s death. Plath’s father, Otto Plath was nonexistent. “Plath’s relationship with her father has proven to be one of the more troublesome of her recurrent themes in this respect. By all accounts, including her own, Otto Plath was a kind, loving father, if formal and somewhat remote, and there was little outward evidence that their relationship was troubled” (John Rietz 417). Plath yearned for the everlasting love that she never received from her father growing up. It’s almost as if she was constantly trying to force building a relationship that she never had with her father. “Otto Plath was her muse” (417). This notion is best represented in Plath’s poem, “The Colossus” by the speaker’s constant efforts to reconstruct the fallen Colossus of Rhodes representing her relationship with her...
Sylvia's genuine emotion that shines through her work is rooted deep in her childhood. Sylvia was a perfectly normal child that enjoyed life until at age eight when she lost the closest person to her. Her father, Otto Plath, died from complication with diabetes. (Kehoe 1) Sylvia had been his favorite and hit her the hardest. The toughest part was that because of her age she was not permitted to go to the funeral so she was never able to let go and say goodbye. She never fully recovered and later in life became convinced that the majority of her pain was caused by losing her father. A. Alvarez, a friend and critic, stated years later “The death of her father, whom she loved, who abandoned her, and who dragged her after him into death.” (Kehoe 1) She tried to pick the pieces up and move on. She moved on to become a good student. In all her years of s...
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.
...he language of war. One of her last poems shows how this vision both restricted and unconstrained her expression (Magill 2225). Some of Plath’s poems, though the personal voice may be dying out, are still very personal (Magill 2226). Plath’s symbolism comes from an arrangement of misfortune. The purpose of Plath’s poems is to show a deeper pattern (Hughes 5). Plath’s narrative, The Bell Jar, remained important to most readers (“The Importance…” 2). Plath believes relationships are necessary, but destructive (Smith 6).
...oire of poetry with a male personage acting as an opposing force. Her work is full of content hinting at her mental instability, yearning for her deceased father, and her desire to end her life. It can be understood that Plath had a sort of Elektra complex obsession with her father. In her personal life, it caused several suicide attempts (one every decade of her life) and her to seek another male to fill the role of her missing father. It was not until she encountered the poet Ted Hughes that Plath thought she had met her soul mate; it was also because of this fiery relationship that Plath tragically ended her life when she ended her seven-year marriage to Hughes after discovering his illicit affair. Ultimately, in her desperate and distressed state, Plath ended her life; she could not face her inner demons, and no one could truly offer her the support she sought.
Throughout the poem, Plath contradicts herself, saying, ‘I was seven, I knew nothing’ yet she constantly talks of the past, remembering. Her tone is very dark and imposing, she uses many images of blindness, deafness and a severe lack of communication, ‘So the deaf and dumb/signal the blind, and are ignored’. Her use of enjambment shows her feelings and pain in some places, in other places it covers up her emotional state. She talks of her father being a German, a Nazi. Whilst her father may have originated from Germany, he was in no way a Nazi, or a fascist. He was a simple man who made sausages. ‘Lopping the sausages!’ However she used this against her father, who died when she was but eight, saying that she still had night mares, ‘They color1 my sleep,’ she also brings her father’s supposed Nazism up again, ‘Red, mottled, like cut necks./There was a silence!’. Plath also talks of her father being somewhat of a general in the militia, ‘A yew hedge of orders,’ also with this image she brings back her supposed vulnerability as a child, talking as if her father was going to send her away, ‘I am guilty of nothing.’ For all her claims of being vul...
Sylvia Plath was American short-story writer, poet and novelist that was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts and died on February 11, 1963. Sylvia Plath is best known for, her books of poems, “The Colossus and Other Poems Collection” and the “Ariel Collection” of Poems.Plath’s poetry was known for its rhyme, alliteration and disturbing and violent imagery. Plath’s poetry is considered part of the Confessional movement, which became very popular in the United States during the 1950s through the 1960s. It is considered a type of poetry about “of the personal”. Confessional poems are more associated with the subject matter of sexuality, mental illness and suicide.
Sexton compares Plath’s suicide to an old belonging in the couplet, “what is your death but an old belonging” (54-55). The couplet serves to convey that the speaker is moving past the initial shock of her friend’s death. The comparison of Plath’s death to an old belonging implies that the speaker used to have a strong emotional attachment and understanding of Plath’s suicide, but now, it is more of a memory that lingers than something that consumes her mind every day. Even so, the death of Plath still impacted the speaker on a deep level because Plath’s death involuntarily forced her to contemplate and to reflect on her own emotions and thoughts on suicide. She experiences an emotional journey that places her on the other end of the death in which she once fantasized. The term “old belonging” illustrates how the speaker previously dreamed and longed for death. However, after experiencing the emotional toll of being on the other side of the death that she once coveted, she reconsiders her desires. The tone has shifted from one of mourning and envy to something that she used to desire, an “old belonging” (55). The sharp left turn that is transmitted in the speaker’s tone articulates the emotional journey she has endured. Therefore, the relation of Plath’s death to an old belonging displays how the speaker no longer wants that death, but she still remembers what it feels like to be the person with thoughts of
Other stylistic elements that Plath uses include imagery and symbolism. She is very vivid in describing the way the bee looks in the last two stanzas: ”With her lion-red body, her wings of glass.....red scar in the sky, red comet.” The words create a clear picture in of what she must have looks like, escaping the “mausoleum,” a symbol of the beehive and, therefore, of the speaker's entrapment. It “killed her,” or rather, killed her spirit.
Orr, Peter, ed. 1966. The Poet Speaks. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. [http://www.sylviaplath.de/plath/orrinterview.html, accessed 6 May 200]
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
Throughout the poem, the character compares her father to different people and labels him. However, the character specifically compares her father to a German and states that she “thought every German was [him]” (29). This line is a metaphor and also shows how by being able to create her father into different people it allowed her the ability to escape from what she was feeling and going through. It is a metaphor because in her mind she is creating her father a German but in reality, he is not actually a German. Most importantly, we also find out that she tried to commit suicide as a way to escape from her pain. She states that “[a]t twenty [she] tried to die/ [a]nd get back, back, back to [him]” (58-59). This shows the characters urge to escape from her feelings and, therefore, tried to commit suicide but didn’t succeed. Plath has portrayed death as an exit and a way to solve one 's problems by escaping rather than confronting them.
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.
Plaths Poetry can be understood through the psychoanalytic model. The motifs of oral fixation, sadomasochism and the desire to return to primary narcissism are consistent throughout Plaths Poetry. Overall these motifs represent the desire to return to the state of primary narcissism and to be reunited with the incestuous love object.