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Sylvia Plath Research Paper

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Everyone passes away in their lifetime, but not everyone will die at their own hand. Sylvia Plath, a famous poet in the mid 1900’s, was one who died at her own hand from suicide in 1963. Plath was a very intelligent, beautiful, clever woman who loved to write poems from an early age. Plath even had her first poem published when she was only eight years old! Today, Plath has over 200 poems published and was awarded the Clascock Prize in 1955 and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1982 after her death. Plath was survived by her husband and two children but her most famous poem was about her father who died when she was younger and had a big influence on her.
On October 27, 1932 in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Sylvia Plath’s life began. “Sylvia was one of the most dynamic and admired poets of the 20th century” (poetryfoundation.org). Plath took a liking to reading and writing poems at a very early age. She started out keeping a journal to hold all of her poems in and later, her very first poem got published when she was just eight years old. The first poem of Sylvia’s to get published was about her father who had earlier died from complications involving diabetes right after she had turned eight.
(poetryfoundation.org) …show more content…

Plath loved to write all the time. Plath wrote even when she was experiencing one of the hardest times in her life shortly before she committed suicide. Although Sylvia Plath said a lot in her short lived life, a quote that that may have some insight on how she wrote her work would be, “Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You’ve got to go so far so fast in such a small space; you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.” ("BrainyQuote"). A majority of Plath’s work was published in books boatload full of poems for children and adults of all ages after her death. Plath has been and will be forever missed from everyone in the poetry world because of her wonderful

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At the mere age of 8, her father died. Thus the famous poet’s journey began. Otto Plath’s death greatly impacted Sylvia, leaving her in a defenseless position against her mental health. A piece of text from an article states, “Plath later said that the first nine years of her life "sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle. "

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A reader knowledgeable of Plath’s true life story can easily grasp the foreshadowing at play. The bell jar did descend again and pushed her to take her life in the same house-just a short distance away- from her children. The last three lines of Plath’s “Sheep in Fog” show the poet’s increasing fragility as she approached the date she took her own life. In January 1963, just two weeks before her death, Sylvia wrote “They threaten to let me through to a heaven starless and fatherless, a dark water.” This is an obvious anticipation of her death.

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During her undergraduate time at Smith, Plath began experiencing symptoms of intense depression. Plath cites during this time in one of her journals, "It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative- whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it ("Sylvia Plath"). In summer of 1952, Plath won a contest that gave her the opportunity to receive a month's employment in New York, but Plath's depression was not alleviated ("The Bell Jar" 22). At the age of nineteen, after not being accepted into a summer writing program, Plath attempted suicide by ingesting sleeping pills. She survived the attempt, but received electroshock therapy that greatly influenced the latter half of The Bell

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Through her life she expressed doubtful attitudes toward the universe. Sylvia Plath, the Marilyn Monroe of literature, 20th century American author, made a large impact in society through writing about her life and the morbid realities, which she has experienced, have been fascinated with, and written and published. She starts her fascinations with death fairly young down by the seaside. Sylvia Plath was born at Boston’s Memorial Hospital on October 27,

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Later, she became the recipient of a scholarship to Smith College and a Fulbright Fellowship in 1955 to Cambridge, where she met Ted Hughes, her future husband. Hughes and Plath married in the summer of 1956, and the young couple decided to live in America for a few years (“Sylvia”; Biography.com Editors). They returned to England in 1959, and the couple welcomed their daughter Frieda in 1960 along with the publication of Plath’s first poetry collection, The Colossus (Biography.com Editors). The year 1962, or the year before her death is easily categorized as the most important year of Plath’s life. In this year, her son Nicholas was born, her husband left her for Assia Wevill, and Plath’s most famous pieces of literature were written (“Sylvia”).

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When she was eight, she had her first poem published in the Boston Sunday Herald. This helped spark her love for writing poetry. In 1950, after publishing a number of her works, she won a scholarship to Smith College (“Sylvia Plath Biography”). Plath was a student in Robert Lowell’s writing workshop class when she met Anne Sexton, one of her biggest influences on her writing. Plath admired both Lowell’s and Sexton’s liberating verse, with the subjects mainly being about mental illnesses, suicide, and family relationships with candor and intensity (“Poetry of Liberation”).

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Her startling poems focus on reflection and often have a depressing tone. [In conclusion,] Sylvia´s poetry was excellent, creative, and dark, influenced by her past. Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, MA. Her mother, Aurelia Schober, was studying at Boston University. Otto Plath, her father, was the professeur.

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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.

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