Essay On Sylvia Plath

In Initiation by Sylvia Plath, the author suggests that conformity and having friends is a wonderful idea, yet the idea of having an individual identity and being an individual is stronger. In the excerpt, Millicent is slowly realizing that conforming and being a part of a sorority is not as exciting as it sounds, and being an individual offers more opportunities to become a unique person.

This poem’s form is clearly adapted to its function because of the one main device that is used to make this poem stand out. The allusion, clearly a reference to the Sirens in “The Odyssey” is the siren’s song itself .The sirens song represents a huge befuddle within readers, and has also been described as the song that nobody has ever heard of because everyone who has heard it has died. This is the most obvious and most notable allusion because according to the lure, Odysseus is tied to the mast of the ship in order to hear the Siren’s Song without jumping overboard (which is what would normally happen due to the songs enchanting power). In this poem, one of the three sirens tells about the song that she sings. Atwood describes in the poem that the anatomy of the song is unknown to all mortals except the sirens themselves. Although, based on the depressing and

In the short story “Initiation” by Sylvia Plath, Millicent Arnold is a narcissistic teenager undergoing her initiation into the most prestige social group at Lansing High. Despite being aware of the risk at losing her best friend, Tracy, Millicent eagerly seeks the opportunity to be part of a close-knit group and as a result, she is mistreated and forced to conform to the group’s narrow standards. Plath explains how being part of a social group does not necessarily help one grow individually, but rather assimilates them into what is portrayed as esteemed social status. As Millicent goes through the downgrading initiation process, she discovers the value of friendship and realizes that being associated with a certain group will not help her achieve confidence in her true self.

Poets, Judith Wright, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickenson all express their views on life and death, however, do so in varying manners. Through imagery, Wright and Plath both consider life’s beginnings, however, Wright considers it to be a beautiful gift, whereas Plath views birth as an empty burden. Subsequently, through structure Dickenson and Wright each acknowledge life, expressing how in some cases it is difficult, yet in other circumstances it is celebrated. Finally, through tone, Dickenson and Plath convey their views on death, yet differ in that Plath believes it is purifying and holds a sick fascination with it, while Dickenson instead holds a unique curiosity about it. Therefore, whilst each poet recognises the journey of birth,

It tends to be the trend for women who have had traumatic childhoods to be attracted to men who epitomize their emptiness felt as children. Women who have had unaffectionate or absent fathers, adulterous husbands or boyfriends, or relatives who molested them seem to become involved in relationships with men who, instead of being the opposite of the “monsters” in their lives, are the exact replicas of these ugly men. Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” is a perfect example of this unfortunate trend. In this poem, she speaks directly to her dead father and her husband who has been cheating on her, as the poem so indicates.

Sylvia Plath was a troubled writer to say the least, not only did she endure the loss of her father a young age but she later on “attempted suicide at her home and was hospitalized, where she underwent psychiatric treatment” for her depression (Dunn). Writing primarily as a poet, she only ever wrote a single novel, The Bell Jar. This fictional autobiography “[chronicles] the circumstances of her mental collapse and subsequent suicide attempt” but from the viewpoint of the fictional protagonist, Esther Greenwood, who suffers the same loss and challenges as Plath (Allen 890). Due to the novel’s strong resemblance to Plath’s own history it was published under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas”. In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath expresses the

In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, a young girl named Lily struggles with growing up with only a harsh father and a housemaid while trying to find her own place in the world. At the age of four, Lily accidentally shoots her mother while trying to help her in a fight against Lily’s dad. Ever since that day, Lily has a difficult time trying to be a lady and trying to cope with her somewhat abusive father. One day, when Lily is fourteen, the housemaid Rosaleen is sent to jail for pouring dip spit on white men’s shoes but later gets assaulted by the men and is taken to the hospital where Lily goes to sneak her out. In order to help incorporate the story’s title into the story, the author has written epigraphs, that are about bees, for every chapter in the book. Chapter two’s epigraph says “ On leaving the old nest, the swarm normally flies only a few metres and settles. Scout bees look for a suitable place to start the new colony. Eventually, one location wins favor and the whole swarm takes to the air”(34). This epigraph parallels the story because of the similarities in how bees move on and look for somewhere to start their new lives and how Lily and Rosaleen try to start their new

In her poem, “Lady Lazarus,” Sylvia Plath uses dark imagery, disturbing diction, and allusions to shameful historical happenings to create a unique and morbid tone that reflects the necessity of life and death. Although the imagery and diction and allusions are all dark and dreary, it seems that the speaker’s attitude towards death is positive. The speaker longs for death, and despises the fact the she is continually raised up out of it.

As a young teenager, Janie becomes infatuated with the idea of an idealistic romance: “She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace…So this was a marriage!” (Hurston 11). This image represents Janie’s budding sexuality; Janie wants to find the love and affection from a man, that the bees share with

In Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees, the theme of feminism often reoccurs.

mirror. Who are almost getting in the way so to speak of its life and

Introduction: Conflicting perspectives are different points of view expressed and influenced by ones context and values. “Birthday Letters” by Ted Hughes is an anthology of poems challenging the accusation that he was responsible for his wife, Sylvia Plath’s death. The three poems The Minotaur, Your Paris, and Red are an insight into Hughes justification of the death of Plath using a very subjective and emotive poetic form. The poems possess many deliberate techniques such as extended metaphors, connotations, diction and juxtaposition to encourage the audience to accept his argument that he was not the one to blame for this world renown tragedy. The poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath also displays conflicting perspectives of the

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

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

The bee motif recurs throughout her verse, most importantly in a series of five poems written in the autumn of 1962. The Bee is implicitly linked to her father, Otto Plath (author of a treatise on bumblebees), but at the same time it becomes a metaphor for sexual conflict. The powerful, ambiguous figure of the queen bee appears in ‘The Beekeeper’s Daughter’ – ‘Here is a queenship no mother can contest’ – and is taken further in the later bee poems, written during another period of emotional