Rebirth in Sylvia Plath's Lady Lazarus, Fever 103, Getting There, and Cut

Within Plath’s first poem “Metaphors” she uses the metaphor “I am a riddle in nine syllables” (1) and describes her changing body during her pregnancy. This poem describes how she is a pregnant mother struggling

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.

Similarly, Plath’s poem ‘Edge’ illustrates how patriarchy seizes the identity of woman, leaving them to be nothing but sexual entities. ‘The woman has been perfected’, society has shaped her into being socially and sexually pleasing. She has been moulded, making her ‘perfect’ to the naked eye, a ‘flower’, a ‘rose’, a ‘Greek necessity’ with no identity. In the second stanza the speaker states that the ‘body wears the smile of accomplishment’ she is now socially accepted.

In her poem ‘Ariel’, she describes stumbling on, “heels and knees”, and compares it to Ariel’s transformation from a mermaid to a human to depict Plath’s coming out of her shell. The feministic tone of the poem talks about the issue of women being in bad situations and the struggle of trying to find the motivation to escape and transform into an improved version of herself. Both poets use their poetry to explore different feminist views in order to discuss the freedom of empowering women; the poems convey the boundaries of social expectations and how this has limited the authors in their personal lives which serves as an encouragement to all listeners of their poetry.

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.

Sylvia Plath's poems evoke the worst of subjective fallacies. Probably some of our charged reactions are symptomatic of the times and the culture; but more of them seem to stem from the always-too-easy identification between troubled poet and what might be the tone of imagery and rhythm of the poem considered. Because Plath worked so intensively in archetypal imagery (water, air, fire as bases for image patterns, for example), many of her poems could be read as either "dark" wasteland kinds of expressions, or as the reverse, as death-by-water, salvation poems--destruction implied, but also survived, phoenix-like.

One may contend that Sexton rejects the appalling degradation of women as being witches, foul-fiends and tempting creatures in literature, too. She admits that men’s “dead body did not feel the spade and the sewer as [her] live body felt the fire” (92). Shakespeare depicts Joan, in Henry VI, as “a ‘troll,’ ‘witch,’ ‘strumpet,’ ‘foul fiend of France’ (qtd. in Sarawsat 90). Likewise, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales represents the ‘wife of Bath Tale’ as bawdy. The protagonist Alison “still submits to the rule of patriarchal world”, she suffers because she is oppressed to the bone. She “struggles for respect in her own household”. That is why; she needs an inner upheaval to dispel any sense of dejection. She is

Plath uses images of the Holocaust and comparisons of her to the Jews to emphasize suffering during the Holocaust because at that time, Jews were the ultimate symbol of suffering. She says, “A sort of walking miracle, my skin / Bright as a Nazi lampshade, / My right foot / A paperweight, / My face a featureless, fine / Jew linen” (4-9). In this quote, Lady Lazarus compares herself to some of the gruesome remains of the Holocaust. Supposedly, the Nazis used the skin of Jews to make lampshades, and Lady Lazarus compares herself to one of them through a simile. Throughout the poem, Lady Lazarus expresses her pain by comparing herself to the Jewish people. Later in the poem, Plath says, “Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. / So, so, Herr Doktor.

Plath’s imagery further delves into the revolting nature of beauty. In the town, the “yew trees blow like hydras” (ln 3). This touches on the theme of rebirth and life. As the yew tree waits for spring, it is like a hydra preparing to grow a new head. This continues as Plath describes the menstrual cycle within the next two stanzas. Women release their “moons… month after month” and it is a “blood flood,… the flood of love.” However, these cycles are of “no purpose” (ln 5-6). After starving for perfection, the mannequins cannot have children and have lost an intrinsic part of themselves. The imagery of the moons further highlights the depiction of a menstrual cycle as it has often been associated with the cycles of the moon. A vital part of childbearing, the blood is a force of love that conveys fertility. The women have given up this ability in order to achieve an unnatural appearance. The speaker finds this repulsive, describing them as “naked and bald in their furs” (ln 13). Although they possess outward beauty, their insides are ugly. The models are forced to contain their empty, unnatural personalities in a glamour that does not belong to them. The

A clue lies in the final image she uses, the vampire. In today's movies and books vampires are portrayed as humans who have gained immortality and power in exchange for the need for blood and avoidance of sunlight and crosses. However, Plath wrote her poem in 1962, and since then our culture's image of the vampire has changed drastically. Historically, people who were transformed into vampires were no longer the same human beings. Instead, they became monsters who retained only the physical appearance of their former selves. Our interpretation of the poem is affected if we assume that when Plath wrote about a vampire she had in mind the older

Sylvia Plath’s confessional poem, “Lady Lazarus”, is generous with a sympathetic insight into the many lives and emotional suffering of Sylvia Plath herself. Admittedly, she attempted to take her own life multiple times; unsuccessful at each attempt, until she ran out of lives at her final effort in which she then died in 1963. Due to her life experiences, Plath is well known for depressing themes such as death, emotional pain, darkness and using the suffering of others to explain what she is going through. Plath makes biblical and historical references in an attempt to evoke a relationship between her situation and those specific events. The poem is introduced with the use of holocaust imagery; the same historical event used as an extended

Cinderella is a poem which was written by Anne Sexton. It presents a story which revolves around a young lady called Cinderella. She suffers a great deal because her father, stepmother, and step-sisters torment her. On the other hand, Lady Lazarus is a poem written by Sylvia Plath. In this poem, Sylvia presents a story of a 30-year-old lady called Lazarus. Her life challenges have compelled her to subsequently engage in suicide attempts because of the feeling that they would salvage her from the troubled life. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the poems Cinderella and Lady Lazarus.

Wrapped in gaseous mystique, Sylvia Plath’s poetry has haunted enthusiastic readers since immediately after her death in February, 1963. Like her eyes, her words are sharp, apt tools which brand her message on the brains and hearts of her readers. With each reading, she initiates them forever into the shrouded, vestal clan of her own mind. How is the reader to interpret those singeing, singing words? Her work may be read as a lone monument, with no ties to the world she left behind. But in doing so, the reader merely grazes the surface of her rich poetics. Her poetry is largely autobiographical, particularly Ariel and The Bell Jar, and it is from this frame of mind that the reader interprets the work as a

Opening Sentences… Widely considered her most celebrated book of poems, the posthumous Ariel exposes Plath’s twisted physiological torment. Perhaps its most well known work, “Lady Lazarus” unambiguously examines suicide and death. It cloaks its reader in the solitude that weighs so heavily on its author. In this poem, Plath alludes to Lazarus, a man who Jesus resurrects from the dead. Plath is in fact the female foil to this biblical figure, and through the chaos and loneliness her husband, father, and friends cultivate, they ultimately drive her to suicide. However, despite her attempts, the poet unfailingly rises from her deathbed to confront an increasingly harsher world. Similar to Plath, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell introduces themes

The poet uses sylphs and spirits (machinery) under whose influence Belinda prolongs her sleep. Also, Ariel is Belinda’s guardian sylph. The spirits guard her and accompany her wherever she goes, “Her guardian Sylph prolong the balmy rest. Twas he had summoned to her silent bed” (Pope 2688). The sylphs or spirits are gods who usually have human like creatures report to them. However, in this satire, the spirits report to the humans which demonstrates the mockery of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. Here, this displays how much every day beauty takes over mere intelligence with women.