Compare And Contrast The Way Plath Presents The Speaker’s Fears In Three

In “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath, the speaker’s tone is revealed through many different poetic aspects. Throughout her writing, the speaker’s attitude towards death appears to be happy but, when looking more closely at Plath’s use of poetic devices her attitude is bitter. Shown mainly through the diction, images, sounds and repetition, this depressing tone emphasizes the speaker’s feelings about death. First, diction or word choice used throughout this poem depicts apart the meaning and stresses the tone. Next, the images used to describe the speaker’s experiences with death shows the emotions and thoughts that go through the speaker’s mind concerning death. These events the speaker

Because the tulips are a representation of life to Sylvia Plath they cause her to think about it,’ they concentrate my attention’, this shows that these flowers are a constant reminder to Plath about her ‘husband and child’ and her responsibilities and commitments. The constant interruption by the tulips and how the poet personifies them makes the flowers seem as though they want to be acknowledged and Plath’s acknowledgement of the tulips draws her attention away from her peaceful and quiet state of mind to the life that she so desires to escape from.

In this essay I will try to compare two poems, the first of which is by D. H. Lawrence entitled Snake. The second is by Sylvia Plath and is entitled Medallion. I will compare the language used, the structure, the theme and the tone of each poem.

The Desire of freedom, the temptation of danger and nostalgia for childhood are examples of twists and turns observed going through life, but it is often at their last moment that people take the time to realize how important their surroundings are and the time passed is precious. Frost poem, “nothing gold can stay” is a writing, underlining the lost in which we are confronted and the incertitude of the future. However, Sylvia Plath’s poem is pointing out more and more the unusual way she sees the world and her own life with her writing “Mirror”. With both of these poems, the reader go through the meaning of life according to both authors. Through disparate personification, imagery, and symbolism, Frost and Plath utilize those literacy diverse to emphasize their poems themes human vanity and the fear of aging.

Sylvia Plath cannot bear the truth and begins to cry; she constantly wants something else to make her feel good about herself, she longs to be young. “I am important to her. She comes and goes. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. She goes back to the lake for answers every morning and the lake is pleased to see her. The poem ends by the lake saying “In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.” This shows Sylvia Plath’s dislike of how old she looks. Sylvia Plath has been looking in this mirror every day for a long period of time, and she is realizing that she is getting older and she cannot do anything about it.

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman” (Mirror, Sylvia Plath, lines

The vivid projection of emotional plight as a metaphorical means to convey the lonely odyssey of life is reflected in Frank O’Hara’s “How to Get There” and Sylvia Plath’s “Elm” as both poets weave personal experiences into provocative language. O’Hara’s immediate experience in “How to Get There” revolves around that familiar moment of acknowledgement of loneliness as a precursor to independence. Through O’Hara’s use of enjambment, one can extrapolate the speaker’s uncertainty of living in a world where struggling and agonizing individually initiates the feelings of fear. This innate feeling of fear enshrouds the speaker in unfamiliarity, yet this exposure to reality contributes to independence and experience. For example, mutualism found within relationships can deter individuals from seeking experience beyond their comfort level (this can affect how they manage struggles stemming from unfamiliarity). Once exposed to unfamiliarity, the understanding of what is known or what should be known becomes a struggle in itself. For Sylvia Plath in “Elm”, the fear of delving into the unknown and being exposed to fierce pain, is palpably frightening yet essential to the human condition. Plath’s use of natural imagery illustrating the inevitable pain experienced in love strikes a chord in the audience, giving us a nostalgic feeling of loneliness and betrayal. The projection of emotional turbulence deeply resonates within those who have felt love and lost it. In essence, O’Hara and Plath

“My Fear” is a simple poem in which the author, Lawrence Raab, portrays fear as a person who is constantly on the prowl and taking note of things to haunt us with in our dreams. Raab makes great use of personification and symbolism throughout the poem in order to reveal the theme that fear is inevitable and is something we all deal with. Raab begins with the first stanza introducing the antagonist that is fear himself, who follows and records the fears that trouble our mind. Through personification we are able to visualize the possibility of a lighter side to fear's character.

It is said that without melancholy there is no art, and there is no better embodiment of that than beloved poet and author, Sylvia Plath. Often referred to as one of the most dynamic poets of the 1900’s, Plath had no limits on her expression through poetry. Her poems ranged from flowing verses on nature to unconventional commentary on the social restrictions placed on individuals. She is most known for her poetic expression of her own mental anguish, never shying away from topics of death and despair.

Sylvia Plath’s emotional turmoil began at a fairly early age; from the time of her father’s death, to her inability to form a meaningful relationship. Sylvia Plath was born the eldest child of Otto and Aurelia Schoeber Plath on October 27, 1932. When Plath was eight-years-old her father, a professor of Entomology and German at Boston University, died. “...I adored and despised him, and I probably wished many times that he were dead. When he obliged me and died, I imagined that I had killed him” (Steiner 45). Plath’s work was heavily influenced on the passing of her father, the grief that consumed the pages of The Bell Jar and many of Plath’s other works was the pent-up heartache that Plath felt for the loss of her father. Plath felt that her “...guilty love...may have caused the loss” and was deeply burdened by it (Ramazani 5). She wrote many different kinds of works; including but not all, The Bell Jar, The Colossus and Other Poems, and Ariel. The Bell Jar was

    In Sylvia Plath’s, Mirror, the message to not be afraid to grow old is clearly shown. A young woman looks into a mirror every day, but as the years go by, this woman begins to grow older and older until she looks like a completely different person. The poem states, “Inme she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman rises...” (16). This story is told from the perspective of the mirror who is always watching this girl turn into a woman turn into an old lady. One of the great playwrights of the golden age, Sophocles, wrote, “No one loves to live more than someone growing old.” Aging is something that is mandatory in life, it is completely unavoidable. Plath clearly wrote this poem to show that growing old should not be something to fear or stop.

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 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.

• Wolfe, Andrea Powell. “(Re) visioning the Cinderella Myth: Sylvia Plath’s Bee Poems” Interactions 17.2

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