1455 words | 3 Pages
Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” is considered by some to be one of the best examples of confessional poetry ever published. In the poem, Plath compares the horrors of Nazism to the horrors of her own life, all of which are centered on the death of her...
3374 words | 7 Pages
I am, I am, I am. Sylvia Plath’s heart beat, and she translated it the best way she knew how. To a woman who was self-aware to an uncommon degree, what else could the sound be but a relentless reminder of her own existence? Many...
5325 words | 12 Pages
This essay will look at both the polarity and unity within the mental suffering of characters and voices from Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire (‘Streetcar’) and Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems, focusing specifically on the extent to which they suffer due to their imagination and...
1300 words | 3 Pages
The primary concern of Sylvia Plath’s poem “Lady Lazarus” is how the female speaker views her relationship with men; the emotions associated with her views of sex are equated to death, and the desire for her to die. This metaphor of death, used throughout the...
1951 words | 4 Pages
Any true representation of horror, the sickening realization of the hideous or unbelievably ghastly, seems something of an impossibility. How can one speak the unspeakable? How can unimaginable terror and revulsion ever be recreated? Yet writers of Modernist literature, reflecting on the anxiety of the...
1129 words | 2 Pages
Throughout an examination of Plath’s poetry, a reader will witness prominent themes of inadequacy and mental anguish. The poet’s lack of self-belief is primarily evident in ‘Mirror’, as the poet struggles to overcome her insecurities. Furthermore, Plath combats her darkest thoughts during ‘Arrival of the...
1793 words | 4 Pages
In her poem, “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath uses violent, unnerving, and controversial imagery to illustrate her tumultuous relationship with her father both before and after his death in 1940. Her work, and this poem in particular, is often distinguished due to the juxtaposition of disturbing metaphor...
1052 words | 2 Pages
Regardless of what role Sylvia Plath was playing at any given time–student, poet, teacher, wife–her feverish perfectionism was a constant factor. During her tumultuous years at Smith College, her concern over the defects she perceived in her character led her to commence a process that...
1803 words | 4 Pages
The Holocaust is one of the most devastating and incomprehensible events in human memory. The systematic killing of millions of civilians and the attempted erasure of their culture defies logic, and exists outside the realm of everyday understanding. Words associated with the Holocaust or the...
1151 words | 2 Pages
Throughout their poems, authors Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson and Charlotte Bronte convey their ideas regarding the despair they have felt throughout their lives, and in particular the concept that ‘thing fall apart’. Through a range of engaging stylistic techniques such as personification, repetition, symbolism, metaphor,...
3229 words | 7 Pages
With the twentieth century now receded, students and scholars will return time and again to contributors of this century’s literary canon. In the realm of poetry, there are several candidates to consider, but one forceful contender for the list of important American poets in this...
2294 words | 5 Pages
Plath and Hughes are both very emotive, passionate poets that tend to use their own memories as a focus point within their poems. However, each poet has similarities and differences in the way that they portray their memories in their writing. For example, Plath tends...
1317 words | 3 Pages
The theme of violence is commonly identified within both Plath’s and Hughes’ poetry; however, the way in which it is incorporated by the two very different poets contrasts one another, from the use of techniques, the different tones throughout – even down to the subjects...
867 words | 2 Pages
Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror” explores the impact of time on individuals, specifically within the realities of aging and losing beauty; here, Plath speaks from an implied autobiographical perspective. As readers, we know that much of Plath’s oeuvre of poetry focuses on her lost youth and her...
1638 words | 3 Pages
Antagonistic relationships are as human as harmonious relationships, perhaps even more so. ‘The Rival’, a powerful poem by acclaimed American poet Sylvia Plath, centers around a universal theme of rivalry and conflict, masterfully depicting the complexity of the state of being against someone. Literally, the...
1513 words | 3 Pages
In her poem “Daddy”, Sylvia Plath speaks to her deceased father, explaining to him how his death caused her pain throughout her life and why she needs to “Kill” him. Sylvia Plath’s father died when she was very young. In her poem she shows that...
4623 words | 10 Pages
Within the poetry of Hughes and Plath, the theme of human relationships is written of in varying and diverse manners. Plath’s work details relationships, such as the parent-child relationship, using powerful and intricate imagery, while Hughes conveys the theme using comparatively simpler, but more metaphorical...
1031 words | 2 Pages
In her 1960 poem “Black Rook in Rainy Weather,” American-born Sylvia Plath relays the feeling that a miracle has alighted in the form of a black rook. The bird’s beauty takes her off guard in a preternatural way on an otherwise dreary day, and she...
924 words | 2 Pages
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath hounds Esther Greenwood who spends the summer of 1953, “the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs” away from hometown Massachusetts, sent off to intern in New York at a reputable fashion magazine with eleven other lucky girls. She is meant...
2118 words | 4 Pages
After the post-humous publication of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, the poet exploded into the scene of second wave feminism, widely regarded as a victim of her mental illness and the men in her life. While the tragedy of Plath’s life is inseparable from her work, more...
902 words | 2 Pages
Although raised near the ocean and fascinated by the power of nature, Sylvia Plath spent most of her life in the suburbs and the city. In July 1960, however, she and Ted Hughes went camping for a week in Rock Lake, Canada. Not only was...
2320 words | 5 Pages
Seamus Heaney and Sylvia Plath are two contemporary poets from very different family backgrounds. Heaney grew up rooted in rural Ireland with a close-knit large family, and Plath grew up in a dislocated family with her mother and brother. Her father died shortly after her...
1021 words | 2 Pages
Considered to be blueprint for the mechanics of tragedy, Aristotle’s Poetics revolves around the assumption that great works of tragedy must include a generous number of mimetic elements, or elements which readily imitate human life. In addition, well-organized tragic plots combine both reversal of fate...