an essay on "cut"
Cut by Sylvia Plath for Susan O'Neill Roe
What a thrill ----
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man ----
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump ----
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
Reading the whole poem we realize that from the beginning there is no single act of will and consciousness in cutting the finger; we can see it from the second line that there’s no “I” responsible for the cut: ” my thumb instead of an onion” instead of for example I have cut my thumb instead of an onion. From this on we feel ourselves in a whirlpool of images and illustrations as if the persona of the poem experience this completely out of her (I refer to the persona as HER, because I don’t feel the need to ignore that most likely the persona is Plath herself or if not she is most likely by the act of cutting an onion a woman) hand, as if she were unconsciously drawn into it. In fact there are only two moments of act (“I” doing something) in the poem: 1. [...] I step on it, Clutching my bottle Of pink fizz. Which proves this fact again that she is absorbed from outside in moments of imagery hallucinations, that is, even when she is doing something she just involves herself in a situation imposed upon her to do so. 2. [...] I am ill,
What a thrill ----
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man ----
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump ----
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
Reading the whole poem we realize that from the beginning there is no single act of will and consciousness in cutting the finger; we can see it from the second line that there’s no “I” responsible for the cut: ” my thumb instead of an onion” instead of for example I have cut my thumb instead of an onion. From this on we feel ourselves in a whirlpool of images and illustrations as if the persona of the poem experience this completely out of her (I refer to the persona as HER, because I don’t feel the need to ignore that most likely the persona is Plath herself or if not she is most likely by the act of cutting an onion a woman) hand, as if she were unconsciously drawn into it. In fact there are only two moments of act (“I” doing something) in the poem: 1. [...] I step on it, Clutching my bottle Of pink fizz. Which proves this fact again that she is absorbed from outside in moments of imagery hallucinations, that is, even when she is doing something she just involves herself in a situation imposed upon her to do so. 2. [...] I am ill,