The Dark Side of Sylvia Plath's Poetry

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The Dark Side of Sylvia Plath's Poetry

bell jar- (bêl jär) n. a cylindrical glass vessel with a rounded top and an

open base, used to protect and display fragile objects or to establish a

vacuum or a controlled atmosphere in scientific experiments (mish 105).

instead of starting with plath's poetry I decided to start off with her only novel, the bel jar. "the bell jar is a novel about the events of sylvia plath's twentieth year; about how she tried to die, and how they stuck her together with glue. it is a fine novel, as bitter and remorseless as her last poems--the kind of book salinger's franny might have written about herself ten years later, if she had spent those ten years in hell" (scholes). i want to explain the imagery in the title of plath's autobiography. i stated the definition earlier. a bell jar is basically like a regular jar that has been turned upside down. it is glass and transparent. unlike a jar, a bell jar is often used to display something fragile. in her novel, plath was fragile and her bell jar was her environment. in her novel she spent five weeks in a mental institution. there, she was on display to many counselors, nurses, physicians, psychiatrists, and psychologists. they watched Pplath regain stability from the day of her arrival to the day of her dismissal. also, "controlled atmosphere" can be seen as the environment of the institute. now on to the poetry of sylvia plath. just a little note... before i read her work i thought poetry sucked. anyway, in the poem "lady lazarus" plath speaks of her own suicide and she even takes some pride in her knowledge of death. in a reading prepared for bbc radio, plath introduced this poem: "the speaker is a woman who has the great and terrible gift of being reborn. the only trouble is, she has to die first. she is the phoenix, the libertarian spirit, what you will. she is also just a good, plain, very resourceful woman" (Plath 294).

i have done it again.

one year in every ten

i manage it--

a sort of walking miracle, my skin

bright as a Nazi lampshade,

my right foot

a paperweight,

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