A Distressed Poet or Just Mentally Unstable?

Sylvia Plath was the first person to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1982,and she is well known for her poems “daddy”. Sadly Plath committed suicide,but before she killed herself she left a note for one of her neighbors to tell them to get a doctor and when they found her she was lying in the oven with wet towels covering the door so her children wouldn't die from the gas to. Plath’s husband Hughes published most of her poems or novels that weren’t published because she had committed suicide at such an early age. It’s because of Hughes publishing her works that she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 but she was too late for her to claim it because she was dead 20 something years or so. Plath achieved this from studying with the one and only Robert Lowwell which she made her famous Colossus

Sylvia Plath’s work is marked with her trademark style, one full of enigmatic analogies and ambiguous metaphors. Sadly though, the life of Sylvia Plath was indeed shorter than anyone expected. Nevertheless, in the thirty years Plath meandered through the world, she left an everlasting impact. Remembered as one of the most dynamic and admired poets of the twentieth century, Plath cultivated a literary community unlike any predecessor. Additionally, since a sizable portion of Plath’s work was read posthumously, her suicide brought the much needed attention to physiological illnesses. Unfortunately though, Sylvia Plath will never know the perennial impact she left from her distinguished works that have touched numerous lives.

Sylvia Plath’s style has 3 to 5 line stanzas, many poems have short lines, and very descriptive writing and vocabulary, there are many poems with rhyme, and many use punctuation for phrasing of the poems. Many of her poems are confessional poems. Plath often tells stories in a way that readers can relate. She adds rhyme throughout her poems at the right moment and pulls the reader in. Some themes that are reoccurring are emotions, anger, relationships, and death. Her poems reflect her depression and life experiences.

Sylvia Plath was a good woman and very gorgeous, one day who fell into a trench of depression, but continues living her life with feelings of depression. In many ways, she was like a grateful, dead flower in the garden. Solitary and pessimistic, she was full of bad intentions where she had attempted suicide many times. She had exemplified herself as a slow horse’s movement, and her writing was full of darkness and gloom due to rational isolation and threatening death. She believed in betrayal, in disappointing everyone around her, in hard work, and in the features of simplicity and multifaceted imageries. Like a death flower, Ms. Plath was also worried about her desolation. At the same time, she was very passionate for death.

Sylvia Plath’s Lady Lazarus is an incredible metaphor of rebirth; the whole idea of a new life from death. Plath throughout her life was suicidal and many of her most famous works revolve around the ideas of death being a new beginning and a way of escaping enslavement from many various factors that bind us to life. There is nothing different about this poem from all of Plath’s other works. She as always represents her life troubles through a worldly event in this case the Holocaust.

She continued her education at Smith College and Newnham College in Cambridge. This is where she met her husband, Ted Hughes. They married just a few short months after and had 2 children. The marriage to Hughes was very depressing for Plath, who had the knowledge of his many affairs. (“Sylvia Plath”, Poetry Foundation) The symptoms of her severe depression, the poor marriage she had and the events of her childhood, made a significant impact on her multiple suicide attempts which ultimately lead to her placing her head in the oven and killing herself. The idea of death is very apparent in many of Plath’s poems, she constructed her views and opinions of death from her external surroundings and experiences. By taking an external approach to the idea of death, Plath was able to display her poems and stories in a way that was much like a cry for help. For example, in the poem “Daddy,” Plath writes “I used to pray to recover you” (Plath,” Daddy”14) This quote demonstrates to the reader that the loss of her father was scary for her, and quite possibly a nightmare that she wished she could wake up from. Another quote in the poem “Daddy” that exemplifies her want to die in order to reach her father again is in lines fifty-seven through fifty-nine where she states, “I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die and get back, back, back to you.” (Plath, “Daddy” 57-59). These three lines exemplify that she wished she could be dead to be with her father

Sylvia Plath was a troubled young poet who wrote mostly about the difficulties within her family and marriage. Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 27, 1932 and died on February 11, 1963 in London, England. In her early life she faced many obstacles, one being her father passing away when she was only 8 years old due to complications from diabetes (poets.org). Plath, herself struggled with depression as she tried to kill herself many times. Therefore these feelings of hers reflected in her poetry. Having a high expectation to be perfect, Plath’s depression was often a result of writers block (PAL).Plath’s poems continued to encourage her large audience of readers who were facing the same issues with depression and other struggles.(Poetry Foundation). Plath was a loving wife to Ted Hughes and later a wonderful mother to her two children (poets.org). Plath gave birth to two children in 1960 and 1962, Frieda and Nicholas Hughes (poets.org). Also in 1962 her husband, Hughes left her for another women,

Sylvia Plath’s poor mental health, which subsequently lead to her suicide on February 11th 1963, may be seen to be reflected in her novel, ‘The Bell Jar’. Death may be deemed to have a lack of meaning throughout her novel due to the casual manner in which the protagonist and narrator, Esther Greenwood, deals with death. Esther’s father passed away when she was nine years old, and she feels that his death marked the point at which she changed, resulting in her mental health becoming unstable. However, along with her mother, she ‘had never cried for [her] father’s death’ (p.159). This clearly demonstrates how Esther deals with death; it is a necessary part of life, and to Esther, as aforementioned, her mental health has caused her to view death as more desirable than ‘sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in [her] own sour air’ (p. 178). Moreover, Esther’s numerous attempts at suicide remind the reader that Esther believes the only ‘way out’ is death. For example, in Chapter Thirteen, Esther asks her friend Cal, how he would kill

Sylvia Plath was influenced to write poems early on in her life. One of the biggest influences within her writing include her father, Otto Plath. Otto Plath had died from an illness caused by diabetes in 1940. After this traumatizing event, Plath had written very vivid poems explaining her problematic relationship with her father, and her feelings after he had died. She wrote a poem named Daddy (“Sylvia Plath” Poetry). Daddy is a poem including a characteristic person representing Plath’s father in real life. Her father in the poem is a dark person that Sylvia Plath has to “kill” (Ardagh, Emily). Plath was very upset about this sudden death of her father, so she thought the perfect idea was to write a poem about him. Another important person

Sylvia Plath, a renowned poet, was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Otto Plath was born in Germany and was a professor of biology at Boston University. Plath’s mother, a student of Otto Plath, was named Aurelia Schober Plath (Two Views on Plath’s Life and Career). Her father died on November 5, 1940 due to untreated diabetes and infection when Plath was eight years old. This experience “haunt[ed] her for life and [lead] her to create most of her poetry.” Plath was brought up in a Christian home, but lost all faith after her father’s passing (Sylvia Plath Biography).

Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton are two very alike women. Both were born in Massachusetts, both wrote poetry, and both committed suicide. A common factor that particularly stands out in these two women is that they both suffered some form of mental problem, but they used that to transfer it onto their writing. It was because of their depression that they were able to be so successful in their writing careers. But even after having poems and books published, that wasn’t enough to satisfy their happiness. In the end, they searched for a way out, a way to end their mental suffering. To understand their poetry, we must first understand a little bit about their depression and the lives they lived.

Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Lady Lazarus”, was greatly about the author’s life: the influence by her suicide attempts, years of troubled mental health, and stressed relationships with her father and husband.

Some of the dark negative emotions Sylvia Plath shares in this poem can make anyone have sympathy on her feelings. Especially, when she writes,

Sylvia Plath was born in Boston. Her first collection of poems, Colossus, was published in England in the year 1960 and two years later in the United States. Her marriage was a failure and Ted Hughes, her husband left her in the year 1962. In deep depression, Plath wrote most of her poems that comprised her most famous book Ariel. On 11th February 1963, Plath wrote a note to her neighbour instructing him to call the doctor. Then she committed suicide using her gas oven.

Sylvia Plath’s life was one of a troubled woman. Her lack of sanity was deeply reflected in her works of writing. Her mental state was very much affected by her life experiences such as her feelings of betrayal towards her father and her instable marriage to Ted Hughes. Plath’s poetry, was a way to explore her mental anguish and share her fixation with death, due to her deathly depression. Despite Sylvia Plath’s crippling life, her poetry was constructed in such an artistic manner in which it touched the lives of many