Metaphors By Sylvia Plath Essay

Sylvia Plath was born in Massachusetts in October of 1932. She was and still is one of the most renowned writers of the twentieth century. She started producing poetry at the young age of eight. Her inspiring poems have awarded her with a Pulitzer Prize, which is a huge honor for any writer. “Metaphors”, which was written in 1959, is a poem with obvious, but hidden meaning. It is a very short poem, with only nine lines. She also uses only nine syllables in each line. A bunch of other subliminal messages can be found throughout this whole piece. The seemingly unrelated metaphors clearly describe her own pregnancy. Plath starts the poem off stating that she is “A riddle in nine syllables” (Line 1). The nine lines and the nine syllables correspond with the
As the baby begins to get larger, she describes her stomach as “This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising” (Line 5); comparing the child to bread baking in an over. She sees herself as just a simple oven. When her stomach enlarges, Plath thinks of herself as “An elephant, a ponderous house” and “A melon strolling on two tendrils” (Lines 2-3). Her weight and size really seem to be a bother to her. She also mentions that she had eaten “a bag of green apples” (Line 8), which it is known that green apples are related to sourness and evil. After reading this poem several times, I find that there is very little joy in the words that she has expressed. Behind the humorous metaphors and comparisons, Plath is not happy about her pregnancy. Throughout the entire poem, there is one line that expresses some kind of brighter emotions— “O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!” (Line 4). This one random line expresses that she finds that there is at least something beautiful and valuable about the seed growing inside of her. Other than that one line, nothing else expresses joy of pregnancy in this poem. She is very well aware of the increase in her