Sylvia Plath Research Paper

Sylvia Plath and Gwen Harwood tell two very different stories of parental relationships, Mother Who Gave Me Life praising Harwood’s mother and speaking with love and affection, whereas Plath’s Daddy is full of hate for her father. These reflections on the poet’s parental relationships are made using imagery, symbolism and tone.

Still, the poets blame their fathers for ruining their lives. Lucille Clifton implies, in her poem, that she did not want the life that her parents had given her. She did not want her childhood problems, that were not of her fault, to follow her into adulthood. Clifton says that her parents “were each other's bad bargain, not mine,” (19). The narrator implies that her parents chose each other, and, subsequently, they chose their problems, but she did not. In the same way that Clifton’s problems seem to follow her into adulthood, Sylvia Plath’s issues seem to follow her. Plath says that she “made a model of you, / a man in black with a Meinkampf

Sylvia prided herself as an amazing poet while not receiving the acclaim she wanted. The Colossus was the only major collection of poems before her death. It didn’t receive too much praise until after her death. Most of her poems dealt with her personal life like those of Daddy and Ariel. She wrote most of these poems when she was depressed, so she coped with her depression the only way she knew: writing poems. She wrote about her father, where she claimed to hate her father due to him walking out on her when she was eight. He didn’t actually leave her on purpose, as he died of complications with his diabetes. However, it made for great writing as it was critically acclaimed for it being a magnificent poem. Ariel is also series of poems known for being known as her best work in terms of poetry. The Bell Jar is

As England’s Poet Laureate, and recipient of both the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and T.S. Eliot’s prize for poetry, Ted Hughes was an acclaimed poet. The shadow of Hughes late wife, Sylvia Plath, kept Hughes stagnant in his career, in which he was known as “Her Husband” (Middlebrook). Hughes most recent collection of poems, Birthday Letters, took him over twenty-five years to write, and contains poems which recount the marriage of the couple. Hughes wrote the poems as a loving gesture towards Sylvia, but the poems were misinterpreted as “an attempt to adjust the public record in the wake of her confession and the mass of commentary which has grown up around them” (Spurr 3). Hughes incorporated into his poetry the ideals of

Sylvia Plath was born on October twenty-seventh 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. She was raised in a middle class family. Plath started writing at a young age. She published her first book at the age of eight. Once Sylvia graduated high school, she went to Smith college in 1950.

Sylvia Plath was an English poet and short story writer born in 1900s. She was best known for her novel, “The Bell Jar,” and poems such as “Daddy.” Plath’s life, including her poetry, her sanity and her marriage was a cycle of ups and downs. After her death in 1963, Plath’s life was depicted in the 2003 film Sylvia, starring Gwyneth Paltrow.

Sylvia Plath is best known for “the intense coupling of violent or disturbed imagery with the playful use of alliteration and rhyme in her work.” (poets.org). “Daddy,” one of Plath’s poems is a way for her to express her life story and allow others to see into it. Living in an abusive home, she was torn down daily. She makes it clear that her father was a male-dominating, evil individual.

In the second stanza she says, “Daddy I have killed you. You died before I had time–“. Going back to Jeffrey Meyers’ notebook, The German Plath, he mentions that Sylvia was her father’s nurse. She would dress up in a nurse costume as she would feed and care for her father while he was sick, and she felt as if she was unable to save him. In line fourteen of the poem Daddy, she writes, “I used to pray to recover you”. Back in Meyers’ notebook, she is quoted to have said, “I’ll never speak to God again!” During the early years of her father’s illness, she prayed and expected God to heal him, so after his passing she found God to blame for his death. It was after the years passed that she concluded that her father had suicided, and now she blamed him for his own death and her suffering, as she later reveals that in the poem. In the twelfth stanza she writes, “I was ten when I buried you./ At twenty I tried to die/ And get back, back, back to you.” Through this poem she reveals that she had already attempted to suicide early in her life. At this point in her life she was heart broken and just wanted to be with her father in a happier place. Finally concluding the poem she writes, “There’s a stake in your fat black heart/… Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” At the ending of this poem she comes to realization that her father could still be with her if he had just gone to the

Sylvia Plath was influenced to write poems early on in her life. One of the biggest influences within her writing include her father, Otto Plath. Otto Plath had died from an illness caused by diabetes in 1940. After this traumatizing event, Plath had written very vivid poems explaining her problematic relationship with her father, and her feelings after he had died. She wrote a poem named Daddy (“Sylvia Plath” Poetry). Daddy is a poem including a characteristic person representing Plath’s father in real life. Her father in the poem is a dark person that Sylvia Plath has to “kill” (Ardagh, Emily). Plath was very upset about this sudden death of her father, so she thought the perfect idea was to write a poem about him. Another important person

Plath’s poem, “Daddy,” is a poem about her father, and how she wishes to destroy the memory of him. Her father, Otto Plath,

She continued her education at Smith College and Newnham College in Cambridge. This is where she met her husband, Ted Hughes. They married just a few short months after and had 2 children. The marriage to Hughes was very depressing for Plath, who had the knowledge of his many affairs. (“Sylvia Plath”, Poetry Foundation) The symptoms of her severe depression, the poor marriage she had and the events of her childhood, made a significant impact on her multiple suicide attempts which ultimately lead to her placing her head in the oven and killing herself. The idea of death is very apparent in many of Plath’s poems, she constructed her views and opinions of death from her external surroundings and experiences. By taking an external approach to the idea of death, Plath was able to display her poems and stories in a way that was much like a cry for help. For example, in the poem “Daddy,” Plath writes “I used to pray to recover you” (Plath,” Daddy”14) This quote demonstrates to the reader that the loss of her father was scary for her, and quite possibly a nightmare that she wished she could wake up from. Another quote in the poem “Daddy” that exemplifies her want to die in order to reach her father again is in lines fifty-seven through fifty-nine where she states, “I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die and get back, back, back to you.” (Plath, “Daddy” 57-59). These three lines exemplify that she wished she could be dead to be with her father

On February 26, 1956, Ted Hughes and other poets hosted a poetry party for the St. Botolph’s Review (Popova). Sylvia arrived at the party and was immediately drawn to the “‘big, dark, hunky boy,’” later known as Ted Hughes (Popova). Sylvia’s first words to Ted were quotes from poems that he had written and published. Despite the amount of drinks she had consumed, she remembered her first encounter with Ted (Popova). She recorded the first day they met and it is “now one of the most famous [encounters] in all literary history” (Popova). Four months after they met, they got married and had two kids named Frieda and Nicholas (“Sylvia Plath Biography”). The beginning years of their marriage were very successful and they both continued to write poetry (“Ted Hughes

In this essay we will look into her life through three of her poems in

At eight years old, Plath got her first poem published in the Boston Herald’s children section. Sylvia had graduated from Bradford Senior High School in 1950. After graduating high school she got her first national publication in the Christian Science Monitor. She got a scholarship to attend Smith College in 1950.

As described previously, “Daddy” combines specific details of Plath’s life and her father’s, making comparisons as brutal as to the Holocaust in their own home, and comparing him to the devil. In “Daddy” she wrote that he, “Bit my pretty red heart in two. / I was ten when they buried you. / At twenty I tried to die / And get back, back, back to you. / I thought even the bones would do. / But they pulled me out of the sack, / And they stuck me together with glue.” Each line written describes specific events in her life, and it could not be clearer. This one of sixteen stanzas is exactly related to the events in her life, yet also provides insight into her own thoughts on herself. In “Ariel,” plath wrote of being “suicidal,” thus describing her life as she attempted suicide many different times and was successful in 1963 when she killed herself (“Sylvia Plath.” Biography).