Conflicting Perspectives

Sample essay – birthday letters
Module C: Conflicting Perspectives Perspective denotes a way of viewing the world, and significantly influences the ways in which responders are positioned with regard to events, personalities or situations. Throughout his anthology Birthday Letters, which is an address to his dead wife Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes develops a perspective which cultivates the sympathy of the responder. Conflicting perspectives are evident in the interplay between memory and hindsight, the opposing personas of Hughes and Plath, and the inconsistency between appearance and reality. The form and content of this anthology is indicative of Hughes’ attempt to publicly impose his perspective upon his relationship with Plath; a perspective
In “Fulbright Scholars” this interplay manifests itself in the tension created by the poem’s opening with, and the repeated juxtaposition of, rhetorical questioning with answers, for instance where he asks “Were you among them? I studied it…”. This questioning and speculative tone gives the impression that Hughes’ perspective is truthful, when in reality his reconstruction of the event is affected by his knowledge of the future. Memories are informed and given significance by hindsight, as when in “The Shot” Hughes reflects on how “Vague as mist, I did not even know / I had been hit”. The use of the past tense in “The Shot” further emphasises Hughes’ dual motives, as he seeks to address Plath while deflecting criticism of his unfaithfulness to
Hughes accusingly refers to Plath as “you”, and utilises high modality language such as “exaggerated” in “Fulbright Scholars” to convey the negative aspects of her character. In “The Shot”, Hughes constructs an image of Plath as irrational and destructive, accusingly asserting that “Your worship needed a god / Where it lacked one, it found one”. The conflict between the personal pronouns is perhaps most overt in “Your Paris”, where he juxtaposes the concepts of “Your Paris” and “My Paris” to highlight the conflicting perspectives inherent within their relationship and Plath’s character. In allowing “your” to dominate the poem, Hughes is perhaps suggesting that Plath monopolised both their Parisian holiday and their relationship. However, through so harshly describing Plath, Hughes to a certain extent alienates the responder. The utilisation of contrasting personal pronouns conveys the alienation between Plath’s and Hughes’ perspectives, while enforcing his