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Sylvia Plath Metaphors Essay

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A writer may use poetry as a way to release his or her emotions without directly stating how he or she may feel and why. Poets use elements of literature such as metaphors and symbolism to draw the attention of their readers to specific meanings that lie within the poem. For example, Sylvia Plath -a noted poet of the mid-20th century- grossly uses metaphors and symbolism to denote her own emotions. Metaphors grab attention by connecting two opposing components while symbolism is used to convey deeper meaning than the words themselves could alone. Plath often intertwined the two as a way to pull focus to the message of her poem. To further elaborate how the use of metaphors and symbolism can convey a much deeper meaning we are going to analyze the poems of one particular poet that utilizes the elements …show more content…

Plath uses the components of symbolism and metaphors to create depth in her works of literature. For example, Plath’s poem “Tulips” can be perceived to illustrate the dismay she felt for the loss of her unborn child. In “Tulips” Plath writes, “They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff—Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.” Plath is using a metaphor to refer to herself as a trait on the human body that is not correlated with the emotions a human may feel. With the use of a metaphor she is drawing the reader in to analyze what message she is incorporating into the line. Again, in “Tulips” Plath writes, “My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water—Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.” In these lines, Plath is exemplifying that she does not have emotional attachments to the individuals that tend to her, again utilizing the use metaphors to constrict attention to the

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