Sylvia Plath Research Paper

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.

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.

In 1963 on a cold winter day of February 11th, Sylvia Plath ended her life. She had plugged up her kitchen, sealing up the cracks in doors and windows before she was found with her head inside of her gas oven inhaling the dangerous fumes. She was only thirty years old, a young woman with two small children and an estranged ex-husband. A tragic detail of her life is that this is the second time she had tried to commit suicide. Plagued with mental illness her whole life, which is evident within her poetry. She would write gripping, honest portrayals of mental illnesses. Especially within Ariel, the last poetry book she wrote, right before she took her life. Although it’s hard to find a proper diagnosis for Sylvia Plath, it is almost definite that she at least had clinical depression with her numerous suicide attempts and stays in mental hospitals undergoing electroshock therapy. Sylvia Plath is now famously known for her writing and the more tragic parts of her life. Such as the separation from her husband, Ted Hughes, mental illness, etc… Plath may not have intended for her life and art to become inspiration to many people but that has become the end result. Sylvia Plath writing shows symptoms of her suicidal thoughts. To study specific moments in Sylvia Plath’s life, it can be connected to certain writing’s of her’s, such as “Daddy”, The Bell Jar, and “Lady Lazarus”.

Sylvia Plath was an American Poet who was renowned for poetry mostly in the United States. She, however lived a difficult and depressing life which led to a few futile suicide attempts, but ultimately led to a successful suicide attempt leaving her children to live on without a mother. This end result was due to a multitude of issues in her life from Sylvia’s sanity. She wasn’t the most stable child. Her marriage also played a role in her suicide. Her successes weren’t acclaimed until after her death, when a majority of her work was released. There were two major aspects to her life: her poetry and her sanity. These three combined make up a majority of Sylvia’s life.

Sylvia Plath, a very talented writer and poet, focuses on two very prominent themes in her works: death, specifically suicide, and suffering. In her only novel, The Bell Jar, the protagonist, Esther Greenwood, takes the reader on a journey that explores the life and struggles of a young female poet and a tragic heroine. Esther's experiences reflect those of Sylvia Plath's. Plath describes her life as she saw it, confessing her thoughts and feelings to her audience. In her poems, "Perseus", "Lorelei", and "Lady Lazarus", Plath further explores the themes of death and suffering, and uses the portrayal of the tragic heroes/heroines in "Perseus" as symbolism.

In college, Sylvia Plath worked for Mademoiselle magazine as a guest editor. Soon after, Plath went into a depression because she missed the chance to meet her idol, Dylan Thomas, and she was rejected from attending Harvard’s summer program for writing. She tried to commit suicide by hiding under her bed and taking her mother's pills but she was found before she died. She went to a mental facility and eventually recovered from her depression. Plath returned to Smith and finished her degree in 1955 (Biography).

Sylvia Plath once said “Let me live, love, and say it in good sentences.” Plath fulfilled this quote because she did write many “good sentences”, seen in her beautiful poetry and novels. Plath is a very distinguished and well known writer because of those good sentences. And her life was indeed filled with love, but also filled with tragedy and depression. Although Plath lived a short life, she wrote prolifically and used the tragedy in her life as inspiration.

It is said that without melancholy there is no art, and there is no better embodiment of that than beloved poet and author, Sylvia Plath. Often referred to as one of the most dynamic poets of the 1900’s, Plath had no limits on her expression through poetry. Her poems ranged from flowing verses on nature to unconventional commentary on the social restrictions placed on individuals. She is most known for her poetic expression of her own mental anguish, never shying away from topics of death and despair.

Sylvia Plath was an unusual write during the 1950’s. She uses a giant amount if imagery, and clear diction throughout her poems. She went to Smith College on a scholarship. Then, Plath received the Fulbright Grant which she used to study at the Cambridge University in England. She suffered a major mental breakdown and attempted suicide during her junior and senior year in high school. Furthermore, her parent names were Otto Plath and Aurelia Plath. Her father passed away when Plath was eight years old from gangrene. He was born in Poland and was Germany. On the other hand, her mother supported Plath dreams. Moreover, she married Ted Hughes, who was a writer, and they lived in England. Plath and Hughes had their first child together in 1960

Much of Sylvia Plath's poetry and her only novel, The Bell Jar, reflect her feelings of mental instability. Plath grew up in Massachusetts and was an intelligent and successful writer at a young age. She was living an American dream. However, her idyllic life was more like a nightmare for Sylvia Plath. She drove herself hard; it was important to her to succeed. When she began to doubt herself and the world around her she became mentally ill.

Sylvia Plath had a past that represents the type of hell that is unimaginable by a normal mind. Her birth by the seed of her educated parents was on October 27th, 1932. Her relationship with her father never fully developed as he died when she was only eight years old from a complication of diabetes. This death confused her psyche and destroyed her innocence at a young age, further creating a precedent of insanity and depression. Her creativity and ambition for success started with her daily journal that she kept from the age of eleven. As she grew to her teenage she posted her writings in regional magazines and newspapers which

Plath sometimes finished a poem every day. In her last poems, death is given 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 tried committing suicide twice, on February 11, 1963, she tried a third time and succeeded. Before ending her life, Sylvia Plath wrote many books and poems, including an a. She had been married to Ted Hughes for six years, they got divorced shortly before her suicide. They had two kids together. First a girl, and then a boy. She was born in Boston,

As is true of a number of 20th century poets, Sylvia Plath tends to create rhythms and structures all her own. She is typically emphatic in her poetry, and there is a sense of almost a deliberate disregard for traditional form. At the same time, Plath very much relies on a standard component of classic poetry: musicality. If she plays with or ignores meter, she nonetheless creates what may be called a chant in many of her verses, and it is a kind of musicality unique to her. Plath's stanzas are consistently declarative, and often each line has a meter contrasting the next. This in turn is emphasized by shades of anger or unrest in her meaning and imagery. These elements considered, it is then possible to construct an Ars Poetica of the poet that actually defies Ars Poetica. As the following examinations of “Morning Song” and “Daddy” reveal, Sylvia Plath employs poetic forms simultaneously musical and removed from reliance on traditional meter and structure, these forms reflect the unique quality of each poem, and the only Ars Poetica to be defined in her work is that of non-conformity.