Facing Death

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

Saying Sylvia Plath was a troubled woman would be an understatement. She was a dark poet, who attempted suicide many times, was hospitalized in a mental institution, was divorced with two children, and wrote confessional poems about fetuses, reflection, duality, and a female perspective on life. Putting her head in an oven and suffocating was probably the happiest moment in her life, considering she had wanted to die since her early twenties. However, one thing that was somewhat consistent throughout her depressing poetry would be the theme of the female perspective. The poems selected for analysis and comparison are, ”A Life”(1960),”You’re”(1960), “Mirror” (1961), “The Courage of Shutting-Up” (1962) and

Sylvia Plath is known as a profound writer, depicted by her lasting works of literature and her suicide which put her poems and novel of debilitating depression into a new perspective. In her poem “Lady Lazarus,” written in 1962, her mental illness is portrayed in a means to convey to her readers the everyday struggle of depression, and how it affects her view of her world, herself, and even those who attempt to tackle her battle with her. This poem, among other poetry pieces and her novel The Bell Jar, identify her multiple suicide attempts, and how the art of dying is something she has become a master of. Plath’s “Lady Lazarus,” about her trap of depression and suicide attempts, is effective and thought provoking because of her allusions to WWII Nazi Germany and the feelings of oppression and Nazism that the recurring images evoke.

In 1963 on a cold winter day of February 11th, Sylvia Plath ended her life. She had plugged up her kitchen, sealing up the cracks in doors and windows before she was found with her head inside of her gas oven inhaling the dangerous fumes. She was only thirty years old, a young woman with two small children and an estranged ex-husband. A tragic detail of her life is that this is the second time she had tried to commit suicide. Plagued with mental illness her whole life, which is evident within her poetry. She would write gripping, honest portrayals of mental illnesses. Especially within Ariel, the last poetry book she wrote, right before she took her life. Although it’s hard to find a proper diagnosis for Sylvia Plath, it is almost definite that she at least had clinical depression with her numerous suicide attempts and stays in mental hospitals undergoing electroshock therapy. Sylvia Plath is now famously known for her writing and the more tragic parts of her life. Such as the separation from her husband, Ted Hughes, mental illness, etc… Plath may not have intended for her life and art to become inspiration to many people but that has become the end result. Sylvia Plath writing shows symptoms of her suicidal thoughts. To study specific moments in Sylvia Plath’s life, it can be connected to certain writing’s of her’s, such as “Daddy”, The Bell Jar, and “Lady Lazarus”.

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.

Sylvia Plath, a successful confessional style poet, struggled throughout her life with issues revolving around her father’s death, unsuccessful and unfulfilling relationships with men, and her mental illnesses. Throughout her struggles, Plath wrote, sometimes writing as much as 10 drafts a day. Despite welcoming into the world two children, whom she loved dearly, Plath still felt unfulfilled by her duties as a housewife. As she wrote more poems, it became clear she was unhappy in her life and in the grips of a serious mental illness. Sylvia Plath’s writing is deeply influenced by her experience with mental illness and the death of her father in her early life.

Sylvia Plath was an American Poet who was renowned for poetry mostly in the United States. She, however lived a difficult and depressing life which led to a few futile suicide attempts, but ultimately led to a successful suicide attempt leaving her children to live on without a mother. This end result was due to a multitude of issues in her life from Sylvia’s sanity. She wasn’t the most stable child. Her marriage also played a role in her suicide. Her successes weren’t acclaimed until after her death, when a majority of her work was released. There were two major aspects to her life: her poetry and her sanity. These three combined make up a majority of Sylvia’s life.

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.

There are several ways to look at the poem, Lady Lazarus and one of those ways is that it could be looked at suicide and also about someone who is obviously emotionally troubled with this self-fulfilling satisfaction in killing herself. It’s like a prophecy that needs to be fulfilled and she does so every so often; at least every decade. Also, the poem could be said to be about someone with a severe mental disorder which explains the radical behavior of the suicidal attempts every now and then and she takes pleasure in doing so.

To make matters worse, when she arrived home a letter awaited her saying that she had been rejected from Frank O'Connor's short story class. She was almost positive that she would get in and was deeply devastated when she received the rejection letter. Both the disappointment of New York and the rejection from the coveted writing class that she counted on started a deep spiral into clinical depression. Pressure was building up between her mom pushing her to return to her old self and her inability to sleep or read. Plath felt despondent. She even had an unsuccessful attempt at suicide by hiding herself away in the crawl space of her cellar and taking an overdose of sleeping pills. However, Plath was found and immediately institutionalized. Plath described this time as the blackest in her life saying in A Birthday Present “I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way” (Malmsheimer 531).

Sylvia Plath was an American author and poet. Her death at the age of 30 by suicide was the end of her long struggle with mental illness throughout her life, chronicled in her most famous work, her fictional, but inspired by her life novel, The Bell Jar, cited for its feminist themes and exploration of mental illness. Plath is considered one of the greatest poets and novelists of the 20th century, whose works were influenced by her mental illnesses, and still have relevance today.

Sylvia Plath, a very talented writer and poet, focuses on two very prominent themes in her works: death, specifically suicide, and suffering. In her only novel, The Bell Jar, the protagonist, Esther Greenwood, takes the reader on a journey that explores the life and struggles of a young female poet and a tragic heroine. Esther's experiences reflect those of Sylvia Plath's. Plath describes her life as she saw it, confessing her thoughts and feelings to her audience. In her poems, "Perseus", "Lorelei", and "Lady Lazarus", Plath further explores the themes of death and suffering, and uses the portrayal of the tragic heroes/heroines in "Perseus" as symbolism.

Eileen M. Aird analyzes and comments, “The danger of such criticism lies in its assumption that the poem is objectively ‘true’, that it bears a precise relationship to the facts of the poet’s life.” The direct criticism Plath puts upon her father is very crucial, yet evidently true if one was research her life. Sylvia Plath’s autobiographical poetry can be easily connected to her life and the answers to the many questions are easier to uncover than one may suspect. As her poetry developed, it became more autobiographical and although through her teenage years she possessed what seemed to be a rounded personality, the anguish and grief of her father’s death was easily linked with her mental instability that haunted her in the later years.

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

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