ipl-logo

How Does Sylvia Plath Explore Death

923 Words4 Pages

Sylvia Plath, Wilfred Owen and Emily Dickinson use a wide variety of techniques to explore the loss of identity, will and life. Plath, known as a confessional poet, suffered from severe depression for the majority of her short life. While Plath was a social commentator, Dickinson, a reclusive writer, wrote prolifically on her morbid fascination with death. Owen became an activist and anti-war poet following his traumatic time as a soldier in World War I. The theme of loss is a common thread found amongst the work of these three poets, including the loss of individuality, death and fortitude. Plath, Owen and Dickinson utilise symbolism, repetition, language, tone and imagery in order to explore this theme of loss.

In order to illustrate the …show more content…

Plath’s ‘Daddy’; uses an extended metaphor to convey the speaker’s frustration regarding the abrupt death of her father. Differently, Dickinson uses a simile in ‘The Last Night That She Lived’ to explore loss from the vantage point of a distant onlooker, whilst Owen uses descriptive imagery to capture the gruesome horrors of death in the war. Plath bitterly accuses her father of being a “fascist” and compares him to her husband, who has a “meinkampf” look. This fixation on the connections between her father and the Nazi’s captures the destructive nature of the relationship between the speaker and their lost loved one. Plath’s cogent use of conceit allows the audience to empathise with the speaker. Alternatively, Dickinson describes the death of a neighbour as “lightly as a reed ben[ding] to the water” and “consent[ing]”, implying that death is graceful and easy. In contrast to this, Owen’s disturbing detailing of the “gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs” of a soldier “flound'ring like a man in fire or lime” in ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ accomplishes the opposite effect of Dickinson’s poem, leaving the audience with the understanding that both death and war are horrific. Plath, Dickinson and Owen, utilise alternate forms of imagery to explore the loss of life from multiple different

Show More
Related
874 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout history, one of the most common occurrences during times of warfare is the death of the soldiers who are fighting for their country. Depending on one’s point of view, a soldier’s death at war could be honorable and glorified, or it can be a gruesome, anonymous demise. In the two poems, “Epitaph on a Solider” by Cyril Tourneur and “The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner” by Randal Jarrell, there is a stark contrast between the emotional impacts experienced by the reader. Through each author’s unique writing style, “Tourneur’s Epitaph on a Soldier” shows glory in a soldier’s death and is supportive of war, while Jarrell’s “The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner” gives a much more painful impression of war and the passing of those involved in it.

Read More
974 Words | 4 Pages

Accessed 23 April 2018. Mays, Kelly J. “Chapter 1 Understanding the Text.” The Norton Introduction to Literature 12th Edition, edited by Spencer Richardson-Jones, W.W. Norton & Company, 2017, pp 92 & 1421. McGuire, Thomas G. and Bryan Doerries. "Bryan Doerries Discusses the Theater of War & the Palliative of Shared Suffering."

Read More
993 Words | 4 Pages

Both Dulce et Decorum Est and Mametz Wood present the incompetent results of war. Dulce et Decorum Est indicates the horrible facts and deaths in war. Moreover, Mametz Wood highlights how precious life is and how easily it can be lost as a result of battle. In this poem “Dulce et decorum Est”, Owen portrays the deadly effects of conflict through the use of metaphor: “as under a green sea, I saw him drowning”. Here, he describes the pain of the gas attack.

Read More
530 Words | 3 Pages

In “Initiation,” Sylvia Plath tells the story of a girl, Millicent, and her search for acceptance in the wrong place, and her eventual discovery regarding the importance of individuality. To accomplish this, Plath uses bird imagery, which chronicles Millicent’s transformation into one who values individuality as opposed to conformity. She uses “flock” to describe the sorority and club mentality portrayed in the piece, and “heather birds” to symbolize an individual. However, while these piece is grounded in a young girl’s search for acceptance, as evident in the words “Millicent had waited for acceptance, longer than most,” the piece can also be viewed as a microcosm of society. This is true as, similar to the sorority within the piece, the “select flock”, or the group in which most desire to be within larger-scale society, looks down on those who are “a bit too different,” a phrase which a member of the sorority uses to describe a girl who had not been chosen to join the

Read More
492 Words | 2 Pages

In “Initiation”, Sylvia Plath’s internal conflict of the protagonist Millicent reveals that one must experience being degraded in order to fully embrace oneself and accept true happiness. Throughout the text, Millicent has her heart set on being part of a specific sorority. She hated the way she was and the way she was looked down at by others and she thought that involving herself in the sorority would help her get out of that position. At the beginning Millicent’s friend, Tracey, discusses the aspect of change and that not matter what Millicent does, she will change when she receives a position in the sorority.

Read More
309 Words | 2 Pages

When one thinks of Sylvia Plath the word that immediately comes to mind is complicated. From the beginnings of her childhood and through each attempted suicide till her last breath, she felt haunted. Sylvia Plath was an American writer who is known for her depressive, deep, dynamic, and different style. Her pieces have been established as her outlet to express herself, which is why many critiques, her audience, and those around her believed she suffered from a mental illness. Some believed she was simply severely depressed, some think she was just ahead of her time and during the early to mid-twentieth century it was unheard of for women to be expressive.

Read More
1242 Words | 5 Pages

War Photographer Comparison In War Photographer, the poet portrays that conflict is severe and explores the disastrous effects of it. This is implied through metaphors especially when it describes seeing a man ‘a half-formed ghost’. Remains similarly explores the idea of conflict but shows its lasting effect through similar techniques like repetition as when the poet repeats ‘dozen rounds.’

Read More
535 Words | 3 Pages

Sylvia Plath’s poetry explores despair, violent emotion, and death; the poet herself used the tragedies of her life such as the death of her father, her broken marriage, and the Holocaust to create her poetry.

Read More
1004 Words | 5 Pages

Both of them led her to write from a more female perspective. Her death still remains a topic of interest as she had taken a very strange route to die-she had turned on the gas and put her head in the oven. Plath was famous for writing in the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for her

Read More
478 Words | 2 Pages

The poetry of Sylvia Plath is shrouded in a heavy veil of figurative language and is often accompanied by her grief, producing themes of a harrowing darkness throughout many of her poems. In one of her most famous poems, “Daddy,” it is clear that Plath draws upon her own life experiences. Weaving in her deep, explosive, and even despondent emotions into the lines of the poem, Plath creates a familiar framework of grief and bitterness. However, Plath leaves no poem ordinary; the unofficial queen of metaphors, Plath coats “Daddy” with a thick layer of comparisons while simultaneously providing evocative imagery and allusions to the holocaust. With a tone of bitterness and the use of extensive figurative language, Plath creates a potent piece full of raw emotion and resentment.

Read More
599 Words | 3 Pages

This is perhaps best embodied by the metaphorical victimization she lends Lady Lazarus in “Lady Lazarus” when she instantiates her as a Jew in the Holocaust, her pain an extension of Nazi atrocities. To Plath, everything appears in a state of exaggeration, from the feeling of existence as a circus act in front of a “peanut-crunching crowd,” to the way the mind figuratively burns as a phoenix and is reborn (Lady 10). The visual lent to these image is unmistakably harsh and grotesque, creating a world for the reader in which death is not only art, but also escape. This is then similar to the way Plath invites horror into a ride on her beloved horse in “Ariel,” a poem by which she means to express the mind’s coming to terms with becoming free and insane. She begins by dashing her joyous scene with the line, “black sweet blood mouthfuls, shadows,” of which connotates death and the unknown.

Read More
2095 Words | 9 Pages

From the age of eight until her death, Sylvia Plath struggled with mental illness. Along with frequent therapy visits, she wrote poetry to reflect the many events in her life. She wrote about everything, from the things that brought her great joy to the things that drove her to attempt suicide. One recurring topic of her poems is her father, Otto Plath, who she adored until he died of undiagnosed diabetes when she was eight. This event sparked a lifetime of depression and anger towards her father.

Read More
1173 Words | 5 Pages

Plath was more of a free verse kind of poet. Though the syntax of her poetry often did not rhyme, her words crashed together in a rhythmic flow. The lines of her poems danced together creating beautiful art. She had a confessional style to her poetry; her poems spoke the words of her soul. Her poetry was often about her father, her depression, death, and motherhood.

Read More
1411 Words | 6 Pages

Sylvia Plath’s autobiographical poem Lady Lazarus, at first glance can be considered merely self-pitying, however the questioning of gender and the poets’ experiences as a female writer, makes readers conscious to the fact that her concerns stem from a distinctively female viewpoint. As Barry points out, female writers protesting through literature is one of the ‘most practical ways of influencing everyday conduct and attitudes.’ Seen likewise within Wintering, the powerful presence of female figures supports the notion that Plath ‘aims to change actually existing social conditions’. A feminist critic might consider whether she also aims to remove the thought that ‘the continued social and cultural domination of males’ cannot be lessened.

Read More
724 Words | 3 Pages

Although the speaker never mentions in the body of this poem, she is constantly mention the revive that Lazarus has experienced and the actions that this name related. Secondly, throughout Plath ‘s writing, the imagery, diction and allusions are all dark and agony, but the speaker’s attitude towards to death seems happy and positive. The speaker long for dead, but she is constantly rebirthed. Therefore, throughout reading the entire poem, her attitude is distress and agony. Finally, it uses the image of The Holocaust to finger out the struggle between Nazi and Jew.

Read More

More about How Does Sylvia Plath Explore Death

Related Topics

Open Document