...Ian Gilbert Words by Sylvia Plath is a powerful poem that strikes at the very meaning of words and their potential. At first glance, feelings of strength and energy wash over the reader. When reading it out loud its almost impossible not to picture an overdramatic actor clenching their right hand and looking up to the sky. The use of the word indefatigable makes this poem quite self evident in the power and emotion spewing from that word. The emotion throughout the poem is almost direct pain. This is shown immediately with the first word “Axes.” After reading it a few times this word is still the most striking because words are like axes. They can be very painful. This pain can also be seen in the lines “Wells like tears” meaning more pain caused from words. From this the reader can infer that Plath was probably recently struck down by words. The next striking visual comes from the use of sound and the way sound acts. “Echoes traveling off the center like horses” giving the reader a great sense of indirect onomatopoeia and a stunning visual. A rock dropping into water gives a similar visual with the use of circles, making another reference to the way sound can have an impact. The final three words of the poem sum up at least some of the meaning within the poem. “Govern a life.” This is very accurate for the majority of us. We try not to, but we live the majority of our lives according to what we hear people say about us and what we should do. All these things that she described...
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...Alita Fonseca Balbi “The Less Deceived”: Subjectivity, Gender, Sex and Love in Sylvia Plath's and Philip Larkin's Poetry Belo Horizonte Faculdade de Letras Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais 2012 i “The Less Deceived”: Subjectivity, Gender, Sex and Love in Sylvia Plath's and Philip Larkin's Poetry by Alita Fonseca Balbi Submitted to the Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras: Estudos Literários in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Mestre em Literaturas de Expressão Inglesa. Thesis Advisor: Sandra Regina Goulart Almeida, PhD Belo Horizonte Faculdade de Letras Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais 2012 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To my father, Tadeu, for always reminding me of the importance of having dreams and being true to them; for motivating me to be creative and to believe in my potential; and for teaching me to seek beauty and happiness in everything I see and do. To my mother, Socorro, for always making sure I enjoy all the possibilities that cross my path, and for reminding me that hard work is the only means to achieve my goals. To my brothers, Bruno and Diego, for being my best friends. To my sister-in-law, Sabrina, for embracing me as family and making me feel at home even when I’m not. To Paulo, for his company, for his love and care, and for all his witty remarks. To the professors of Letras, Julio Jeha, José dos Santos, Eliana Lourenço and Gláucia Renates, for being extraordinary professors, and for all the knowledge each...
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...Mirror – Sylvia Plath This poem is by Sylvia Plath and the narrator is a mirror. The mirror is personified and is endowed with many human traits. This poem is about a mirror that reflects only what it is shown and hence the role of the mirror is said to be the revealer of the reality and truthfulness. The mirror is also said to be faithful. The interesting features’ regarding this poem is how the poet changes tones between the two stanzas, which makes the ending impactful. In the first stanza, the mirror and its role is introduced. The mirror is lonely and its only companion is the wall of which it feels it has become a part of. The mirror shows us some of its human characteristics. However in the second stanza the poet brings in human life, a woman and it is also now a lake, which reflects the unsatisfied lady. The second stanza also shows the comparison of when the lady was young and now when she has become old. The factor of age is brought into the poem, which shows that the lady is getting old and that her reflection in the mirror is displeasing her. The woman turns to other objects such as “The candle” and “The moon” to which the author describes as “liars” which means that they don’t show her for who she really is. The author uses the candle as symbolism for life and the triumph over darkness. However the use of these objects could also represent how humans turn away from the actual truth and go seek something to which they might find more pleasant. The...
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...raised in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts during the Great Depression, Sylvia Plath endured an oppressive and depressing childhood. On the surface, Plath appeared to be intelligent, sensitive, and flawless, but inside she was living in misery. Sylvia Plath's emotional life, and her arduous past with her father's death, her tragic break up with Ted Hughes, feminism, and bipolar disorder played an immense part in her career as a poet by inspiring her to create her somber masterpieces. Despite all her troubles, Sylvia Plath excelled as a student at Smith College, won awards, and prizes for her writing, and was a straight a student. Then, she met her future husband and ex-husband, Ted Hughes, whom she would have two children with. Sylvia Plath, was an extremely prodigious poet, she published her first poem, Circus in Three Rings, at age eight. By writing over 121 compelling poems and one stellar novel based on her life experiences, women's rights and injustices, she became the face of 20th century feminism. Sylvia Plath’s poetry is mainly about 20th century feminism and women’s social injustices. "The poem Daddy criticizes the male aggression and depicts men being responsible for all the social injustices" (Hunt). In Sylvia Plath's versification Daddy, she illustrates how men are dominant over women, by comparing herself to Jews, and men to the Nazis. “I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you” (Plath, "Daddy"). She outlines how women are a minority, and don’t have a voice...
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...SYLVIA PLATH Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer. She is widely recognized as one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century. Her best-known poems are carefully crafted pieces noted for their personal imagery and intense focus. Many concern such themes as alienation, death, and self-destruction. Her vivid imagery, searing tone, and intimate topics cemented her place among the pantheon of great poets. Best known for novel The Bell Jar and her second volume of poetry, Ariel, Plath's reputation has only grown since her death in 1963. She is considered a poet of the confessional movement, which was led by Robert Lowell, but her work transcends this label and speaks to more universal truths than simply her own emotions. Although the sensational nature of her death by suicide has led some critics and readers to conflate the value of her life and art, Sylvia Plath's poetry demonstrates an astonishing capacity to engage with the art of poetry; many of her words and images have become fully entrenched in the literary consciousness. EARLY LIFE Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts to Aurelia Schobert Plath (American of Austrian descent) and Otto Emile Plath (immigrant from Grabow, Germany). Her father was a biology and German professor at Boston University. He was also an author of a book based on bumblebees. There was a stark age difference between Plath’s parents, her mother being twenty one years...
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...Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) An American poet and novelist of the 20th century was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Sylvia Plath is best known for her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar and her second volume of poetry collection, Ariel. She was one of the most dynamic and expressive poets of her time. As a student she was successful, won many awards and scholarships ,at the age of 11 she started keeping a journal of her poems of which many were published in her early years itself. However, inspite of such perfections in her academic life she felt anything but perfect in her own skin. Her poems show her deep anguishes with her own life involving her broken marriage with Ted Hughes, unresolved issues with her parents with so much light on the passing of her father when she was only eight and her own vision of herself. At the time of her undergraduate years she has started showing symptoms of severe depression and already had a history of mental illness since childhood which ultimately lead her to her death. Her conditions led her to try to commit suicide not once but twice before she finally succeeded the third time. She had a sort of disturbed mind which can be felt through her much personal poems such as “daddy” which brings out her deep insecurities of being “fatherless” Feminists potrayed Sylvia as a woman driven to madness by a domineering father, unfaithful husband and demanding duties of motherhood. The hardness of her life increased her need to write ,which she could...
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...“Two Sisters of Persephone” by Sylvia Plath, introduces a stage in Plath’s life. Written in 1956, the same year Plath got married, this poem presents two potential paths for Plath and also exposes her severe depression that began as a young girl and endured throughout her adulthood. The speaker’s inability to reconcile two personalities in this poem leads to her demise. This is illustrated though textual and literary devices, as well as mythological allusions. Plath’s background along with Greek myths allows the reader feel a part of Plath’s dilemma and relate her problem to many women. Sylvia Plath was born in 1932. The death of Plath's father in 1940 led to her extreme depression, which never subsided. She had two unsuccessful suicide attempts at ages 10 and 20. However, in 1954, things began to seem optimistic, with Plath receiving scholarship to Harvard summer school and then in 1955 with her graduation from Smith and attending Cambridge University on Fulbright fellowship. On June 16, 1956, Sylvia Plath married Ted Hughes. Plath was known to be a feminist, which is evident in this poem, “Two Sisters of Persephone.” When her hard-working self was presented with marriage, Plath was confronted with a crisis that is represented in the poem. With her new marriage, she questioned whether or not she should remain herself and work, or become the stereotypical wife, stay home, and merely bear children. The emotional effects on Plath from the death of her father ultimately...
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...Sylvia Plath had a life full of ups and downs. Her lifelong battle with multiple different illnesses is what made her career but also ended it at the same time. Using her research along with the research of other Dr. Jamison was able to make a “literary, biographical, and scientific argument for a compelling association, not to say actual overlap, between two temperaments--the artistic and the manic-depressive—and their relationship to the rhythms and cycles, or temperament, of the natural world.” Plath is just one poet among an extensive list of poets that have suffered from this illness (Butscher 385). Sylvia Plath was born to Otto and Aurelia Plath on October 27, 1932 in Boston Massachusetts. Plath’s father who was a professor at Boston University, the school Plath’s mom was attending, took a bus, boat, and trolley to get to work every morning (Steinberg, “A Celebration”). This dedication proves that Otto...
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...A prominent figure of modern American literature, confessional poet, Sylvia Plath, works hold grand significance, for it lead to the probe of a feminist-martyr to patriarchal society, sex-based roles, and psychiatric care. Noted for the blend of intense imagery and humorous use of alliteration and rhyme, Plath associating her works with her personal battles of anguish and depression, further solidified her mark on American history. Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Winthrop, Massachusetts, to an academically well-established family. Her father died when she was eight, marking the beginning of her lifelong internal battles of depression, hence her poem Daddy. Ambitiously driven and exceptional student, from a young age she kept journals, published poems in reginal magazines and newspapers. She later attended Smith and Cambridge University, where she met and married the poet, Ted Hughes, birthing two children. Throughout her life, Plath suffered deep depression and...
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...Jessica Sutherland English 1102 What Does Internal Mean to Eternal Man? The poem “Fever 103°”, written by Sylvia Plath, reveals competing satire and radical takes on the poem. A formal analysis and reader-response will explore the poems two meanings and how they are shaped and built within the work. The work in short is an expression of sex and sensuality versus safe guarding ones purity and oneself. As it opens with Cerberus at the gates of hell, unable to lick clean the feverish tendon, then to love as in the smell of a snuffed candle, next to the smoke breaking the speaker’s neck. The poem continues to compare adulterers to devilish leopards, but in the next stanza she pleads and her sheets grow heavy. The elements of allusion, diction and, imagery come together to highlight the poem’s ambiguity. Its ambiguity, the two views of taking the poem as the speaker being straight forward in presenting the celibate as more godly, and as a result the impure unworthy of them, and the perspective that the speakers god-complex and displayed self-importance is satire to mock the pure who find themselves so mighty. The two takes on the work are hidden from another once it is read within the internal perspective view of the reader. “Fever 103°” is a poem of two foils chosen to created make a mockery of the reader, the views are pinned together to show the human self-servient manner to choose what gives them self-justification...
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...Literary Commentary Essay: The Rival The quote, “Too much of anything could destroy you, Simon thought. Too much darkness could kill, but too much light could blind” by Cassandra Clare is significant in understanding the concept revolving around this poem. The speaker seems to have trusted her husband too much that when he cheated on her, it came as a sudden shock. Sylvia Plath’s “The Rival” was designed to portray the poem’s aim, to explain that one shouldn’t trust too much since it can end up shattering one’s life. Too much of anything will only harm us. The most prominent way in which this aim was seen through is narration/structure, literal/figurative meaning and one point of allusion. Narration and structure were both effective in recognizing the poem’s aim. Utilizing the poem’s audience as the poet’s husband’s mistress, as well as using a semicolon stresses the poem’s aim. In stanza 3, the poet discusses the rival’ actions. She claims that the rival’s thoughts are sent with love, yet are also considered poisonous. “White and blank expansive as carbon monoxide” The poet demonstrates that the poem’s audience is the poet’s husband’s mistress through of the use of a simile. White is a carries a connotation of cold and lifeless, while, blank is a motif of death and also without life. Thus, the speaker compares the poem’s audience, her husband’s mistress, to carbon monoxide. Not only comparing her, but comparing the effect of carbon monoxide to the effect of her rival. It is...
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...Tulips by Sylvia Plath Tulips, by Sylvia Plath seems to be a poetic expression of depression. The speaker who I assume is Plath is describing the psychological effects after a surgical procedure,which I feel is the time when sadly Plath miscarried her baby. The poem was written through her own view in a hospital room, where the reader is given an insight to the inner thoughts of a woman who has gone through a terrible ordeal, and the objects around her which influence her mentality. The poem follows Plath's admission into hospital and the heart-rendering account of her attempt to recover. There are nine stanzas in the poem, each with five lines, there is no evident rhyme pattern and there is little structure to the poem, although the lack of organization in each stanza seems to be a reflection of the confusion and the loss of control that Plath feels, the only structure shared between the stanzas is the abundance of punctuation, creating a slow rhythm throughout the poem, although Plath uses alliteration to increase fluency in parts of the poem, “plastic-pillowed”, “water went” and “light lies on white walls”. Plaths tone is serene throughout the poem, however there is a sarcastic tone when she says “The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here”. The tone of the poem starts out as depressed and bleak then changes into more dynamic and hopeful and the imagery more surreal: “the mouth of some great African cat”. In the first two stanzas, Plath talks about the situation...
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...her attitude towards her pregnancy is not static. Through her ironic use of various metaphors, Plath is able to convey her feelings of bearing a child, and how her perception and emotions of herself change over the course of her pregnancy. Plath was born in 1932 the first child of Otto and Aurelia Plath in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents “demanded superior academic performance” and this resulted in Plath...
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...poem “Mirror” written by Sylvia Plath identifies the woman’s physical complexities of her beauty that becomes transparent within the mirror. The woman in the poem is getting older, and while she is aging, the mirror goes on watching the process. In the poem, the woman is realizing that she is getting older and that she is losing her natural beauty. The woman is a narcissus because she believes that speaking to the mirror would reveal the truth. The woman has discovered that her physical appearance is changing and she cannot come to face the terms due to the fact that her reflection is aging. The woman’s reflection is observed in the mirror where communication commences between the mirror and the woman. The mirror is candid towards the woman, who is oblivious to the truth about her beauty. Sylvia Plath uses personification to display the human attributes such as truthfulness. “I have no preconceptions. I am not cruel, only truthful” (Plath l 4). The quotation illustrates that the mirror is speaking to the woman and the woman does not have any preconceptions. It displays that the mirror is an inanimate object. The mirror demonstrates truthfulness, not cruelty. The mirror speaks the truth whether it is good or bad, because the mirror does not lie. Visual imagery is portrayed in the poem because it displays an insight of what the woman sees in the mirror. “Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully” (Plath l 10,13). The quotation illustrates...
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...The poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath is about her life and how she lived in a male dominated world. There are many allusions within the poem and how she compares historical events to her own experiences. The first example of allusion is the entire poem and how Sylvia’s past has haunted her. She talks about how she was abused as a child and how her father treated her like a prisoner. She refers to her father as a “Nazi” and herself as a “Jew”, throughout the poem she talks about the significant events that happened in World War 2 such as the concentration camps in Auschwitz and how she feels that she is being kept imprisoned as a Jew in a concentration camp as well as her father acting like a Nazi would towards a Jew. The second example of allusion...
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