Tone in Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus"
In “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath, the speaker’s tone is revealed through many different poetic aspects. Throughout her writing, the speaker’s attitude towards death appears to be happy but, when looking more closely at Plath’s use of poetic devices her attitude is bitter. Shown mainly through the diction, images, sounds and repetition, this depressing tone emphasizes the speaker’s feelings about death. First, diction or word choice used throughout this poem depicts apart the meaning and stresses the tone. Next, the images used to describe the speaker’s experiences with death shows the emotions and thoughts that go through the speaker’s mind concerning death. These events the speaker experiences give a vivid description, which reveal her attitude. Lastly, the repetition and sounds throughout the poem encourage the importance of the poem. Through diction, images, repetition and sounds depicts apart the poem in showing the true meaning and most essentially, the part of this poem that reveals her attitude towards death.
The title is the first indication that Plath uses diction to underline the tone and attitudes towards death by the speaker. “Lady Lazarus” firsts suggests that this speaker is a woman. Then, for “Lazarus” Plath alludes to an occurrence in the Bible, where Jesus Christ raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11:44). This use of diction from the beginning shows that Plath’s speaker or the woman’s manner and outlook towards death, which means that she has attempted suicide, but has not been successful. Next, in the first line of the poem, “I have done it again” (1), suggests disappointment and sadness in this woman’s life. This first statement therefore, brings the ...
... middle of paper ...
... tone of the speaker through her attitude.
In conclusion, Plath’s exercises various poetic devises that emphasize the attitude towards death by the speaker. Diction as a poetic devise shows though the choices that Plath makes in the selection of her words to depict the unenthusiastic tone of the poem. Then, the next poetic devise used is imagery, which was the most affective devise because of the vivid images the audience can imagine in their own minds. This approach also represents the depressing attitude and tone towards death. Lastly, the sounds and repetition are also used to show and express the downing aspects of the poem, including the tone and the attitude of the speaker. All together they make up just some of the important poetic devises that are being used in this poem that can analyze the speaker’s attitude towards death, which clearly is deadly.
First of all, the speaker starts her poem personifying death as a kind gentleman who comes to pick her up for her death journey. It is obvious if the reader looks at “He kindly stopped me” (2). This kind of personification makes the reader feel that death is something normal and dealing with it is just like people dealing with each other.... ... middle of paper ... ...
Dickenson uses very particular diction to describe the general theme of death within the poem. She uses phrases such as, “Stillness in the air,”(Line 3) “wrung them dry,”(Line 5) and “then the Windows failed”(Line 15), to describe the events of death as well as the events leading up to death. Her choice of diction makes the reader see death a little more vividly than a person would regularly view death. In stanza two, Dickenson says:
Millay’s poem “Thou famished grave” explores death’s inevitable success and the speaker’s resistance against it to gain victory within loss. The first way Millay achieves this is through the animalization of death. The poem describes death throughout with words such as, “roar” (2) and “jaws” (7), which leads to a portrayal of death as a predatory animal. A further description in the poem of the speaker as “prey” (9), helps to strengthen this portrayal. As a result, this animalistic depiction of predator and prey shows death’s advantage and dominance over life. In addition, it shows that the speaker is like a gazelle being hunted by a lion. They will not stand motionless and be defeated, but will run away to survive death and “aim not to be
The poem “The Death of a Toad” incorporates the literary devices of structure, syntax, imagery, and diction to portray the speakers’ sarcasm. The poet leads the reader through the detailed stages of the toad’s death through out every stanza. The grammatical forms that the speaker uses is to help depict the scene of the dying toad. Another tool the speaker uses is to refer to death in an indirect way. The stanzas progressively illustrate the dying toad as well as the cynical view of the speaker.
In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives.
I will discuss the similarities by which these poems explore themes of death and violence through the language, structure and imagery used. In some of the poems I will explore the characters’ motivation for targeting their anger and need to kill towards individuals they know personally whereas others take out their frustration on innocent strangers. On the other hand, the remaining poems I will consider view death in a completely different way by exploring the raw emotions that come with losing a loved one.
Death can both be a painful and serious topic, but in the hands of the right poet it can be so natural and eloquently put together. This is the case in The Sleeper by Edgar Allan Poe, as tackles the topic of death in an uncanny way. This poem is important, because it may be about the poet’s feelings towards his mother’s death, as well as a person who is coming to terms with a loved ones passing. In the poem, Poe presents a speaker who uses various literary devices such as couplet, end-stopped line, alliteration, image, consonance, and apostrophe to dramatize coming to terms with the death of a loved one.
As a prelude to an inquiry into thematic elements of the poem, it is first necessary to draw out the importance of Fearing’s use of experimental form. Fearing “adheres” to the conventional use of strophic poetic construction, making use of epigrammatic style, where the seven stanzas separate the lament into isolated combinations and experiments on language and the content suggests each might stand alone as organic entities. Putting these highly-varied units into a single poem reflects on the incoherence of broader theme of death and the response to death, the dirge, as well as the notion that such a broad topic as death contains many sma...
The two poems, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”, by Dylan Thomas and, “Because I Could Not Wait for Death”, by Emily Dickinson, we find two distinct treatments on the same theme, death. Although they both represent death, they also represent it as something other than death. Death brings about a variety of different feelings, because no two people feel the same way or believe the same thing. The fact that our faith is unknown makes the notion of death a common topic, as writers can make sense of their own feelings and emotions and in the process hope to make readers make sense of theirs too. Both Dickinson and Thomas are two well known and revered poets for their eloquent capture of these emotions. The poems both explore death and the
In the 1862 poem, After Great pain, a formal feeling comes--, Emily Dickenson presents death from the perspective of the bereaved. This poem is written in the third person, and informs the reader as to the actions and thoughts of the mourners through an omniscient narration. In contrast, most of Dickenson's other death related poems show the reader the perspective of the dead. The vivid imagery in this poem functions to enhance the reader's perception of the poem. The following passage conveys a resplendent physical sense of coldness as someone is frozen to death: "This is the Hour of Lead-- Remembered, if outlived,
In the New Testament of the Bible, Lazarus is a man who rises from the dead at the command of Jesus Christ (John 11:38). The title of this poem, "Lady Lazarus"(the "Lady" without a doubt referring to Plath herself, as this is an example of confessional poetry; the "Lazarus" being an allusion to the biblical figure) is an accurate indicator of the content of the poem. "Lady Lazarus" is about Plath's third attempt at suicide, and her subsequent 'resurrection'. In lines 65-79, Plath develops the speaker's contempt for the doctors who brought her back to life. Through this, Plath develops the character's paranoia.
The speaker started the poem by desiring the privilege of death through the use of similes, metaphors, and several other forms of language. As the events progress, the speaker gradually changes their mind because of the many complications that death evokes. The speaker is discontent because of human nature; the searching for something better, although there is none. The use of language throughout this poem emphasized these emotions, and allowed the reader the opportunity to understand what the speaker felt.
This opposition shows Keats highlighting the delicate correspondence between happiness, death and melancholy having humanistic traits. In order to experience true sorrow, one must feel true joy to see the beauty of melancholy. However, Keats’s poem is not all dark imagery, for interwoven into this poem is an emerging possibility of resurrection and the chance at a new life. The speaker in this poem starts by strongly advising against the actions and as the poem continues urges a person to take different actions.
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.
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.