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Theme of death and suicide in sylvia plath poems with quotes
Analysis poetry about death
Comment on the themes of death and suicide in the poetry of Sylvia Plath
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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. In the first three verses of the poem Lady Lazarus, Plath presents the idea of suicide and death; this can be proved in the first verse. "I have done it again" by being translated as "I have tried to commit suicide again." But, the reader will only know about what she is talking about until later when she says, The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Plath uses this stanza to communicate that she is talking about death by using some gruesome imagery about a corpse that is in a state of decomposition and ready to become ash . …show more content…
Comparatively, in the sixth stanza, Path, refers to death as “the grave cave” and “how soon the flesh will be at home on her”, this fragment can be the representation of how calm she feels with killing herself and the connection she feels with doing it on her own house. Plath considers death as a satisfactory, comfortable act; and it’s here where her masochistic self surfaces, it provides an insight on how well at ease she feels with death. She also uses her death as a show. She does this by changing the language to that of a
In conclusion, I have found that both poets are successful in presenting their particular ideas about what a journey is to them. For Plath, a journey represents a desire for freedom and a metaphorical escape from the insecurities within her own life and it is clear to us that her escape is pivotal in her journey of self acceptance. Larkin has also shown that journeys are an escape from life, but unlike Plath he is running away from society and the oppressions he feels bound by, whereas Plath wants to escape from the shackles of her thoughts.
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.
Plath is a very personal poet. She also uses symbolism throughout the majority of her poetry and prose. Plath writes based on everyday occurrences during her lifetime. Most of her work is actually diary entries without punctuation. Plath gets most of her inspiration from her everyday life. She enjoyed writing about the things that happened day to day.
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
In Plath’s case, her tragic life is a crucial element that one cannot pass over. Various researchers believe that being able to recognize and study the poet’s life is the key to his or her poems. Glyn Austen agrees when he writes, “Certain key events provide a framework for approaching Plath…death of father, suicide attempt, psychiatric treatment, marriage, childbirth, hospitalization, betrayal, suicide” (Austen). All these factors suggest that emotion is Plath’s fundamental material when it comes to the motivation of her topic.
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...
Although readers might not figure it out at first, Plath is telling her story from the point of view of a mirror, and later, a lake. Plath does this by using human verbs to describe the mirror's actions in order to create metaphors for what the mirror is really doing. For example, in line two, Plath shows he mirror "swallowing," which in reality is the mirror reflecting. Plath's personification is essential to her message in showing readers how much power the personified mirror holds over the woman in the poem. She calls the mirror truthful, but not cruel, and the mirror itself acts innocent throughout the poem even though it can tell the woman is distressed because of it. The personification in "Mirror" shows readers that although the mirror believes itself to be blameless and honest, what the woman sees in the mirror is clouded by societally created stigmas and expectations, which create the gloomy and sad feel of the
In American culture, suicide and depression is considered to be one of the darkest taboos. It has the particular quality of being both enticing yet foul. Although suicide and depression are seen as dark, and disturbing, both have made many people famous. Sylvia Plath, on of the most renowned 20th century poetess, is one of them. Plath used many of her poems as ways to cope with her depression and suicide based on certain life events. Plath’s poems such as, “Daddy”, “Tulips”, and “Lady Lazarus” were influenced by life events which later gave people insight to Plath’s suicide at the age of 30. Plath’s difficult life events also caused her to write her most successful poems.
Her vivid imagery helps the reader envision the dead woman while her use of symbolism more deeply conveys her thoughts and attitude on the subject of death. Having the knowledge that the author, Plath, committed suicide after composing the poem make the reader even further understand why Plath may have titled her poem “Edge” for as she wrote it she was at the edge of her own
In lines 65-66 Plath uses apostrophe to address those doctors: "So, so, Herr Doktor / So, so Herr Enemy." To her, the doctors are enemies- in the stanza previous to this line, she establishes the doctors as nearly vulture-like. Lines 61-64 state, "And there is a charge, a very large charge / For a word or a touch / Or a bit of blood / Or a piece of hair on my clothes."Assonance ("charge, large charge") is used in this example in a mocking fashion towards the doctors. Lines 67-68 establish the speaker's fear that her fate is being used by the doctors for gain in the field of science: "I am your opus / I am your valuable." Later, the speaker-character's contempt of the doctors that Plath has established is tied in to a Nazi allusion, which augments this concept. In lines 73-78, Plath writes, "Ash, ash--- / You poke and stir / Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--- / A cake of soap / A wedding ring / A gold filling." This allusion to Nazis (wedding rings and gold fillings were harvested from the imprisoned Jews during the Holocaust, and their remains were used for soap) is also an example of an extended metaphor. The Nazi metaphor is, in fact, extended over other Plath poems as well- notably "Daddy.
Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath both convey Plath’s feelings of subjugation and hopelessness. She struggled to make herself feel heard over the male voices that were constantly silencing her. First from her father and then her husband. Plath uses Holocaust imagery to illustrate her battle against overwhelming male oppression she faced. Plath recreated herself as a victimized Jewish woman punished by Nazis— who metaphorically represent the male reign that she feels has crushed her freedom and individuality. This powerful and shocking metaphor is used to criticize patriarchal views and belief. The theme of death and suicide is heavily present as well. It is well known that Plath had multiple suicide attempts and “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy”
In conclusion, Plath is successful in the poetry because she managed to express certain things such as death in the variety of ways. She views death as being something horrible, a condition at which people are de-humanized and lack all th emotions and feelings. At the same time Plath connects death to life and makes an assumption that it is impossible to understand life without knowing that death exists. Dickinson, on the contrary, depicts death as something humans are both afraid of and at the same time are waiting for all their lives. Death in the poetry of Dickinson is not so horrible as in the writing of Plath. Dickinson views death as being a perfect condition when person gets freedom from all the troubles and can have eternal life.
It is a message from Plath to her father speaking of everything he has put her through. It expresses Plath’s anger towards her father and to a certain degree, grief because of his death. Plath’s life is rough when she is writing this because she is going through a deep depression and she is having suicidal thoughts. Plath’s father was an authoritative figure in her life and had strict policies which were extreme. ‘Daddy’ has an angry tone which makes one think Plath hated her father. Plath had written this poem shortly before her suicide in 1963 to express her still present grief (Shmoop).The form this poem takes is a ballad. In this poem Plath paints a picture of what her childhood looked like when her father was present and how her life was affected after his death.The poem also paints an image of Plath's father and how he acted. There is this constant theme of loss and grief throughout this poem. One of the sound devices used is slant rhyme in what seems to be once every other stanza. For example, “And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do.”. One of the sensory devices used throughout the poem is a paradox. Throughout the first part of the poem Plath describes how it feels to lose her father and how much his death affects her life. It also tells of all the sorrow and pain she seems to be going through because of him. On the contrary, the second part of ‘Daddy’ seems to
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.”)
A brief introduction to psychoanalysis is necessary before we can begin to interpret Plaths poems. Art is the expression of unconscious infantile desires and the strongest of these desires is the wish to “do away with his father and…to take his mother to wife” (Freud, “Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis 411).This is what Freud called the Oedipal conflict. For women the desire is of course reversed to killing the mother and marrying the father and is called the Electra complex. Children resolve this conflict by identifying with their same sex parent. Loss of a parent can prevent the normal resolution of the Oedipal conflict and result in a fixation or obsession with the lost object (object is the term used to define the internal representations of others). The desire to have the lost object back is also the desire for what Freud called primary narcissism. ...