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Mad Girl's Love Song Analysis

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Society commonly forgets that insanity is not only a mental illness, but also the act of being extremely foolish; therefore, making the term exponentially more applicable to people, beyond the deranged. In the villanelle, “Mad Girl’s Love Song,” by Sylvia Plath the speaker is introduced as an insane young girl who perpetually dwells on the idea that her love has been a figment of her imagination. She constantly questions the relationship’s authenticity, and failing to gain clear perspective each time, slowly bolsters her insanity the longer she spends contemplating the concept. The repetition utilized by the author exposes the obsessive thoughts of a heartbroken girl which cause her to lose her sanity, spiraling into the dark corners of her depressed mind, effectively establishing the somber tone and revealing the theme regarding the pain of unrequited love. The darkness and gloom, which encompasses the speaker’s struggle to find happiness in her heartbreak-induced depression, is heightened by the repetition of her morbid thoughts. An image of an “arbitrary blackness” (Plath 5) preventing her from distinguishing beauty establishes the grim scene. Her subsequent admittance that whenever she closes her eyes “the world drops dead” (1) illuminates the morose attitude she obtains as thoughts of death overtake her mind in the wake of her lover’s betrayal. Additionally, this demonstrates the fact that her mind is her only solace from the hell that the living world has become as
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