Sylvia Plath Research Paper

Joan D. Vinge once said, “We are all born with a unique genetic blueprint, which lays out the basic characteristics of our personality as well as our physical health and appearance... And yet, we all know that life experiences do change us.” In the short story, “Initiation,” by Sylvia Plath, Millicent, a teenage girl whom is being initiated into a high school sorority must go five days doing what their sorority big sister commands them to do. While being initiated, Millicent starts to realize that while being part of a group that she’s been longing to be apart of is great, being an individual and creating yourself makes you more unique than those who are part of a group. Having individuality allows you to be more free, and makes you more memorable to those around you.

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.

In the short story “Initiation” by Sylvia Plath, the protagonist Millicent, a girl at Lansing High School is being tried as a member of an elite sorority. The girls must go through a week of being an older sister’s servant to be then tried on Friday at Rat Court. Only the most popular girls are accepted into the sorority. These popular girls are also the ones who get the most, popular boyfriends. Everything seems like a dream to Millicent except for the fact that her best friend Tracy wasn’t even considered. Although she wants to belong in the sorority, Millicent finds out that things might not be as perfect as they seem. In “Initiation” by Sylvia Plath, the author uses the point of view third person omniscient to allow the reader to

America stands as the most prominent nation of liberty and freedom for all, yet some people still feel the reins of America’s oppressive past. Those include young African Americans and women, who feel that society places unequal expectations on them, simply based on their gender or race. Two young, American writers, Sylvia Plath and Langston Hughes especially feel this way through their works, Sylvia Plath at Seventeen and Theme for English B. Plath and Hughes employ tone, tone shift, and parallelism throughout their works to convey their message that young adults must stand up to demoralizing social expectations.

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.

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 born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, to German immigrant, Otto Plath and American-born Aurelia Plath. Otto and Aurelia gave Sylvia Plath an early start in her venture to become an author through their own natural literary gifts and reverence for education (Critical Insights 13, 14). However, tragedy struck only nine days after Sylvia Plath 's eighth birthday when her father died of an embolism of the lung, an event that greatly affected Plath and is alluded to in several of Plath 's works, including The Bell Jar ("The Bell Jar" 23). After Otto Plath 's death, Sylvia Plath and her remaining family moved from the seaside inland to Wellesley, heavily impacting her imagination for the worse, but providing her with a far

Sylvia Plath’s work is marked with her trademark style, one full of enigmatic analogies and ambiguous metaphors. Sadly though, the life of Sylvia Plath was indeed shorter than anyone expected. Nevertheless, in the thirty years Plath meandered through the world, she left an everlasting impact. Remembered as one of the most dynamic and admired poets of the twentieth century, Plath cultivated a literary community unlike any predecessor. Additionally, since a sizable portion of Plath’s work was read posthumously, her suicide brought the much needed attention to physiological illnesses. Unfortunately though, Sylvia Plath will never know the perennial impact she left from her distinguished works that have touched numerous lives.

Sylvia Plath was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts in 1932. She started writing poetry at a young age, and had her work published in some periodicals. Her father died in 1940 when she was only 8, and his

As one of the most multitalented writers of the twentieth century, Sylvia Plath was highly esteemed by fans and fellow writers alike. Sylvia Plath’s parents, Aurelia Schober and Otto Plath, had met when Aurelia became Otto’s student at Boston University. Otto was a biology professor with an infatuation with bees; he had even published a book titled Bumblebees and their ways. Otto and Aurelia married in January of 1932, and by October of the same year Aurelia gave birth in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts to a daughter, Sylvia.

Sylvia Plath was a novelist, and an American poet. She was born on October 27th, 1932 in Jamaica plain, Massachusetts.

A relationship is an emotional connection to someone involving an interaction between two or more people. There are many types of relationships, some functional and others far from being workable. I will demonstrate this through my texts of; Little Fugue, and Morning Song both poems written by Sylvia Plath; the movie, Love Actually; and the book, Trickster’s Choice by Tamora Pierce.

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

Everyone knows that life is hard. But for some, it’s as if life itself picked them out to labor the worst of what it has to offer. Sylvia Plath was a confessional poet, using her personal experiences and very real situations to give “negative” emotions the artistic charm and characteristics traditionally saved for “positive” emotions. Her father died in her eighth year of life, and although this event tormented her until her own death, time went on. She married Ted Hughes, the two of them encouraging each other’s careers as much as they could, but still there was tension between them. It was when Plath learnt of her husband’s infidelity in the fall of 1962, that her poetry enhanced both in quality and depth. She began writing about her own

Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. She wrote her first poem at the young age of 8 ½. that poem was displayed in The Boston Traveller. When she first began writing, she wrote about general topics, nature, and scenery, but as time went on and with more experience, her poems acclaimed more depth. Plath loved writing, and in an interview with Peter Orr, Plath once said ‘I don 't think I could live without it. It 's like water or bread, or something absolutely essential to me. I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I 'm writing one. Having written one, then you fall away very rapidly from having been a poet to becoming a sort of poet in rest, which isn 't the same thing at all. But I think the actual experience of writing a poem is a magnificent one” (The Poet Speaks).