Tone in Sylvia Plath's Lady Lazarus Essay

Some of the poems Emily Dickinson wrote, usually offered many different views of death that involve physical and emotional responses of the soul and body’s journey through nothingness, madness and even eternity. The greatness in her poems comes from the use of literary devices to give meaning to death and the different interpretations of the journey through death. Although Dickinson presents contradicting thoughts sometimes, it is clear that she believes that there are many types of deaths in a human being’s life. This paper compares and contrasts the theme of death in Dickinson’s three poems titled “I heard a fly buzz”, "Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “After great pain a Formal Feeling Comes”.

She is somewhat prepared to meet her demise. Although the tone of the poem is mainly calm, it does change as the speaker becomes closer to death. It is also very ironic because the speaker is referring to death in blithesome imagery. “We paused before a house that seemed a swelling of the ground the roof was scarcely visible the cornice in the Ground “ (5.1-4) the speaker refers to her grave as her home. The fact that she characterizes her grave as her home shows how comfortable she is with the idea of death. In the first three stanzas the poem is very relaxed. The usage of words such as “kindly” (1.2), “slowly” (2.1) and “civility” (2.8) give off an attitude of comfort. Furthermore in the 4th stanza the reader can recognize the speaker growing cautious as she begins to question her life and what exactly are the intentions of her companion. As the poem reaches the last stanzas the tone shifts from the once calm and casual tone to a more sad and serious resonance. The speaker is coming to the realization of her inevitable destiny.

In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives.

Poets, Judith Wright, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickenson all express their views on life and death, however, do so in varying manners. Through imagery, Wright and Plath both consider life’s beginnings, however, Wright considers it to be a beautiful gift, whereas Plath views birth as an empty burden. Subsequently, through structure Dickenson and Wright each acknowledge life, expressing how in some cases it is difficult, yet in other circumstances it is celebrated. Finally, through tone, Dickenson and Plath convey their views on death, yet differ in that Plath believes it is purifying and holds a sick fascination with it, while Dickenson instead holds a unique curiosity about it. Therefore, whilst each poet recognises the journey of birth,

The last two stanzas are the darkest, and ultimately appear to put some type of closure on Plath’s life. She obviously believes that she killed her father when she was ten years old, stating that “if I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed

Death is something that at some point will come to each of us and has been explored in many forms of literature. “The Raven” and “Incident in a Rose Garden” are two poems that explore common beliefs and misconceptions about death. Though both poems differ in setting, tone, and mood there are surprising similarities in the literary tools they use and in the messages they attempt to convey. The setting and mood establish the tone and feel of a poem. In “The Raven” we are launched into a bleak and dreary winters night where a depressed narrator pines for his dead girlfriend.

The darkness of the start of the poem is later contrasted with words such as ‘white’, ‘wheat’ and ‘glitter’. Plath states, ‘I unpeel… dead hands, dead stringencies’, meaning that she is breaking free of her conscious unimaginative self, and connecting with her creative sub conscience. She emphasises how quickly she is extricating herself and hurdling towards artistic creativity with the imagery of an ‘arrow’. She also describes herself as ‘the dew that flies suicidal’, implying that her conscious self has died and surrendered to creativity.

Although Plath uses atrocious examples of death and uses the rebirth of Lazarus as the basis of the poem, the underlying tone presented is

While the poem speaks of death, the tone is very subtle and joyful because of the multiple imageries of nature through diction such as “bird,” “garden,” and “water.”

The mood and tone of the poem is encouraging and persuasive, but the words he uses in the poem are not always encouraging and persuasive. He uses words like “grave”, “grieved”, and “dying” to compare to death, in which he is encouraging his father to fight.

The reader, Mankind, is influenced to look into his or her own perception of death. Mankind first thinks about the constant dread of death to come and take them from their life as they read the first few lines. These lines illustrate the behavior of fear in which him or her will “shudder, and grow sick at heart” (Bryant 13). Then the setting of death shifts to nature and equality, leaving mankind to be intrigued and to question whether what they believe is entirely wrong. In the last paragraph Bryant asks the reader to accept death and “approach thy grave, / Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch / About him and lies down to pleasant dreams” (Bryant 79).

Sylvia Plath’s life was one of a troubled woman. Her lack of sanity was deeply reflected in her works of writing. Her mental state was very much affected by her life experiences such as her feelings of betrayal towards her father and her instable marriage to Ted Hughes. Plath’s poetry, was a way to explore her mental anguish and share her fixation with death, due to her deathly depression. Despite Sylvia Plath’s crippling life, her poetry was constructed in such an artistic manner in which it touched the lives of many

Emily Dickinson once said, “Dying is a wild night and a new road.” Some people welcome death with open arms while others cower in fear when confronted in the arms of death. Through the use of ambiguity, metaphors, personification and paradoxes Emily Dickinson still gives readers a sense of vagueness on how she feels about dying. Emily Dickinson inventively expresses the nature of death in the poems, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)”, “I Heard a fly Buzz—When I Died—(465)“ and “Because I could not stop for Death—(712)”.

These feelings or abundance and well-being, according to Mark Bracher, make it quite simple for the reader to look at death calmly and accept their own mortality as consequence of a rich and fulfilling life (Bracher 1990, 634). Bracher accuses the poem of pretence

Some of the dark negative emotions Sylvia Plath shares in this poem can make anyone have sympathy on her feelings. Especially, when she writes,