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Essay on Morning Song Analysis

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Morning Song – Sylvia Plath

Morning Song, by Sylvia Plath, was written in February 1961, the same month she suffered a miscarriage.

Morning Song, by Sylvia Plath, explores the physical and emotional links between a mother and child, and Plath's own growing maternal bond with her child. In the poem, Plath is contemplating her relationship with her new child and it is clear she has mixed emotions of apprehension and awe. The opening line of the poem introduces her first impressions of the child. "Love set you going like a fat gold watch." This immediately creates a positive connection with the baby, as she uses the word "Love" as the origin of her child. The simile "fat gold watch" creates a somewhat confusing image of the child, …show more content…

In both pieces she wishes to be detached from love and responsibility, yet as the poem progresses, she has a change of heart, almost an epiphany.

The next stanza moves on to talk about how Plath's apprehension stops her from bonding with he child with these lines: "I'm no more your mother / Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow / Effacement at the wind's hand." Here Plath (the ‘cloud') is resenting giving birth to her image as it reminds her of her own inevitable mortality. The child is the mirror, which reflects the dissipation of the cloud.

Plath seems to then have a change of heart. She creates a fragile, beautiful image of her child; "All night your moth-breath / Flickers among the flat pink roses." Use of consonance in "moth-breath" and alliteration in the line "Flickers among the flat pink roses" constructs the soft sounds of the infant's breathing. It is interesting how she utilises the flower imagery which is similar to her other poem, Tulips. In Tulips, the flowers bring her back from the state of detachment, and here it is the baby's breath, soft as roses, the awakens her love for her child. The awakening of this love is expressed in the last lines of that stanza; "I wake to listen: A far sea moves in my ear."

However, she stills resents the newfound nocturnal annoyance, evident in how she describes herself as "cow-heavy" as

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