Sylvia Plath Poetry Analysis

Saying Sylvia Plath was a troubled woman would be an understatement. She was a dark poet, who attempted suicide many times, was hospitalized in a mental institution, was divorced with two children, and wrote confessional poems about fetuses, reflection, duality, and a female perspective on life. Putting her head in an oven and suffocating was probably the happiest moment in her life, considering she had wanted to die since her early twenties. However, one thing that was somewhat consistent throughout her depressing poetry would be the theme of the female perspective. The poems selected for analysis and comparison are, ”A Life”(1960),”You’re”(1960), “Mirror” (1961), “The Courage of Shutting-Up” (1962) and

In the short story “Initiation” by Sylvia Plath, the protagonist Millicent, a girl at Lansing High School is being tried as a member of an elite sorority. The girls must go through a week of being an older sister’s servant to be then tried on Friday at Rat Court. Only the most popular girls are accepted into the sorority. These popular girls are also the ones who get the most, popular boyfriends. Everything seems like a dream to Millicent except for the fact that her best friend Tracy wasn’t even considered. Although she wants to belong in the sorority, Millicent finds out that things might not be as perfect as they seem. In “Initiation” by Sylvia Plath, the author uses the point of view third person omniscient to allow the reader to

America stands as the most prominent nation of liberty and freedom for all, yet some people still feel the reins of America’s oppressive past. Those include young African Americans and women, who feel that society places unequal expectations on them, simply based on their gender or race. Two young, American writers, Sylvia Plath and Langston Hughes especially feel this way through their works, Sylvia Plath at Seventeen and Theme for English B. Plath and Hughes employ tone, tone shift, and parallelism throughout their works to convey their message that young adults must stand up to demoralizing social expectations.

It tends to be the trend for women who have had traumatic childhoods to be attracted to men who epitomize their emptiness felt as children. Women who have had unaffectionate or absent fathers, adulterous husbands or boyfriends, or relatives who molested them seem to become involved in relationships with men who, instead of being the opposite of the “monsters” in their lives, are the exact replicas of these ugly men. Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” is a perfect example of this unfortunate trend. In this poem, she speaks directly to her dead father and her husband who has been cheating on her, as the poem so indicates.

Sylvia Plath was a troubled writer to say the least, not only did she endure the loss of her father a young age but she later on “attempted suicide at her home and was hospitalized, where she underwent psychiatric treatment” for her depression (Dunn). Writing primarily as a poet, she only ever wrote a single novel, The Bell Jar. This fictional autobiography “[chronicles] the circumstances of her mental collapse and subsequent suicide attempt” but from the viewpoint of the fictional protagonist, Esther Greenwood, who suffers the same loss and challenges as Plath (Allen 890). Due to the novel’s strong resemblance to Plath’s own history it was published under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas”. In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath expresses the

In 1963 on a cold winter day of February 11th, Sylvia Plath ended her life. She had plugged up her kitchen, sealing up the cracks in doors and windows before she was found with her head inside of her gas oven inhaling the dangerous fumes. She was only thirty years old, a young woman with two small children and an estranged ex-husband. A tragic detail of her life is that this is the second time she had tried to commit suicide. Plagued with mental illness her whole life, which is evident within her poetry. She would write gripping, honest portrayals of mental illnesses. Especially within Ariel, the last poetry book she wrote, right before she took her life. Although it’s hard to find a proper diagnosis for Sylvia Plath, it is almost definite that she at least had clinical depression with her numerous suicide attempts and stays in mental hospitals undergoing electroshock therapy. Sylvia Plath is now famously known for her writing and the more tragic parts of her life. Such as the separation from her husband, Ted Hughes, mental illness, etc… Plath may not have intended for her life and art to become inspiration to many people but that has become the end result. Sylvia Plath writing shows symptoms of her suicidal thoughts. To study specific moments in Sylvia Plath’s life, it can be connected to certain writing’s of her’s, such as “Daddy”, The Bell Jar, and “Lady Lazarus”.

Sylvia Plath was an American Poet who was renowned for poetry mostly in the United States. She, however lived a difficult and depressing life which led to a few futile suicide attempts, but ultimately led to a successful suicide attempt leaving her children to live on without a mother. This end result was due to a multitude of issues in her life from Sylvia’s sanity. She wasn’t the most stable child. Her marriage also played a role in her suicide. Her successes weren’t acclaimed until after her death, when a majority of her work was released. There were two major aspects to her life: her poetry and her sanity. These three combined make up a majority of Sylvia’s life.

Rhyming couplets such as “date” and “late”, “rehearsing” and “nursing” are surprisingly simple, but meaningful, as they highlight how the author examines this important issue in society. This clearly communicates how sympathetic the poet feels for the women who are faced with nurturing children by themselves, as negative connotations in “departing” and “aimless”. More particularly, the “departing” of the man’s smile emulates how her disconnection from society has left her emotionally broken and somewhat regretful that she decided to have children in the first

Emily Dickinson lived a large period of her life isolated from the outside world, surrounded by her close family and friends. It is apparent that with most of her spare time, she wrote poems and letters. Dickinson’s poems were heavily influenced by the gothic movement in the 19th century of America, and her fascination with nature that is exposed through her continuous theme of nature being the source of joy or pain in your life. Both Dickinson’s curiosity about nature, and the gothic movement, influenced the recurring theme in her poems, which is displayed in the analysis of “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”.

Metaphors Analysis in Sylvia Plath's Poem In Sylvia Plath’s poem, Metaphors, she uses striking imagery to explore her ambivalent attitudes about pregnancy. For example, she uses a negative metaphor saying she is an elephant, meaning she thinks that she has become very fat since she got pregnant. On the other hand, she uses a positive metaphor saying the baby is precious, meaning although pregnancy has its down sides it has got a few good sides like the baby.

Emily Dickinson is considered to be one of the greatest poets of figurative language and imagery. I found her poem “Because I could Not Stop for Death” to be an exemplary illustration of those forms of writing. Enlaced with the personifications of Death, Immortality, and Eternity; Dickinson reaches into the depths of the reader’s psyche and transports them on a journey into her world of life after death. In this essay, I will attempt to show that due to certain event that occurred towards the end of her life that death’s arrival; although premature, was a welcomed relief and set the tone of the poem. The negative attributes that are normally associated with the arrival of death are replaced with a memorable carriage ride to meet the narrator’s eternity. The figurative writing within the poem leaves plenty of room for different interpretations of its meaning; however, Dickinson leave many key indicators within the symbolism and figurative language of the poem to convey a clear understanding, that is once you analyze all the facts.

Emily Dickinson was and is one of the most prominent, female lyric poets. A recluse for nearly her entire life, Dickinson had plenty of time to become the distinguished prolific poet she is commonly recognized as being in present day. Dickinson wrote hundreds upon hundreds of brilliant poems in her lifetime, but “I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died—” stands out as unique among them all. The speaker’s point of view coming from an after-death perspective is but one of the many details that makes this poem so intricately distant from the rest. Along with that detail, Dickinson uses multiple other poetic devices, like similes, metaphors, and personification, to develop her viewpoint of life surrounding death, establishing an overarching theme of death being simple.

Sylvia’s Plath’s “Metaphors” is about a woman feeling insignificant during the midst of her pregnancy. Striking imagery is used to explore the narrator’s attitudes about having a child. Plath uses metaphors in every line, including the title itself, making the poem a collection of clues. The reader is teasingly challenged to figure out these clues, realising that the metaphors have

How Sylvia Plath's Life is Reflected in the Poems Daddy, Morning Song, and Lady Lazarus

Wrapped in gaseous mystique, Sylvia Plath’s poetry has haunted enthusiastic readers since immediately after her death in February, 1963. Like her eyes, her words are sharp, apt tools which brand her message on the brains and hearts of her readers. With each reading, she initiates them forever into the shrouded, vestal clan of her own mind. How is the reader to interpret those singeing, singing words? Her work may be read as a lone monument, with no ties to the world she left behind. But in doing so, the reader merely grazes the surface of her rich poetics. Her poetry is largely autobiographical, particularly Ariel and The Bell Jar, and it is from this frame of mind that the reader interprets the work as a