Preview

Research Paper On Sylvia Plath

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
612 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Research Paper On Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was one of the most self-motivated and well-regarded poets of the 20th century. She was an American poet, novelist, and short story write. Plath was born in Boston and studied at the University of Cambridge before receiving approval as a poet and writer. By the time, she took her life at the age of 30, Plath was already known in the literary community. In the following years, her work attracted the attention of many readers, who saw in her singular verse an attempt to catalogue despair, violent emotion, and obsession with death. Plath uses her poems to explore her own mental suffering, her troubled marriage to poet Ted Hughes, her unresolved conflicts with her parents, and the vision she has of herself. Plath utilises personification, and complex imagery to express her major themes concerning the unfair oppression of women, nature’s …show more content…
Plath uses personification in her poetry in order to allow her to discuss the fragility of the human condition and to exaggerate how the human life is very fragile. She wrote “black rock” as she desires back talk from the mute sky, Plath doesn’t believe in God explaining why she says, “it’d be nice”, Plath also refers to how she wishes she knew the intelligence behind nature. Black rock is mainly written in an Atheist world view, she speaks about the aspects of nature being God like because it last’s so long, where as we as humans live for a limited amount of time while nature lives on. She writes about this to draw attention to the fact that it’s the opposite “world is cruel etc.”. “Ripped and pulsed in the glassy updraught,” this also backs up what she thinks of the world as she talks about how the sun was baring down on the dead man’s body giving him no privacy and any sympathy making nature again seem violent using the sun. Plath uses personification to to convey the idea that nature is unsympathetic o the human

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The poem includes “the clouds assemble and mumble their messages” (6) and “the grass, in its green time, bows to whatever moves it” (11). The clouds must have been given the chance to “assemble” (6) and converge through the use of the same wind that swayed the grass. Personification does well to develop a sense of connectivity that all life has on Earth. Such examples are examples of personification namely because clouds cannot innately “mumble their messages” (6) and the ground does not innately shudder as an ant walks upon it (3). These non-living entities are given human characteristics in the form of sentiments and actions not natural to these entities in real…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    “Elm”, written about her toxic marriage to poet Ted Hughes, mainly focuses on her struggle to recover from her husband’s infidelity. However, much like many of Plath’s other pieces, elements of the poem can be interpreted as referring to her ongoing battle with depression. A prime example of Plath’s writing that can be interpreted in different ways is the line “I am terrified by this dark thing/ That sleeps in me” (“Elm” 31-32). Many choose to interpret this dark thing as her remaining love for her husband. Since the idea of love directly correlates to the overall theme of the poem, this is a popular interpretation of what the “dark thing” is referring to. However, considering Plath’s mental state at the time of writing, it can also be argued that the dark thing “sleeping” inside her is more likely the personification of her depression. Other lines in Sylvia Plath’s “Elm” reference both her heartbreak and her depression at the same time. Plath writes, “I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets”(16). By this, she means that she has had to suffer through the horrific ends of beautiful experiences. The most obvious of these beautiful sunsets that ended tragically is Plath’s marriage to Hughes. This metaphor can apply to more than just her relationship, however. It can also be applied to her life. Plath’s early life was, for…

    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    The poem was a single piece from the Ariel collection, and is the best known. It is about suicide, and reincarnation is a way of its own. In a bizarre way, it seems as though Plath is comparing death to a form of art, peaking a curious widespread in this poem. Some enthusiasts draw the conclusion that because the poem Lady Lazarus was written so close to Sylvia Plath's suicide, it was left as a foreshadowing poem (Raritan). Inevitably, with the angst from her failed marriage and the weight of the world suppressing her, Plath decided that she could bear the cruel world no more. On a dreary January morning in London, Sylvia Plath took her life. She gassed herself in her small, cold kitchen and ended her bittersweet life. Misery overcame every last bit of light in her world, and blew the candle out. Marty Ascher, publisher of the unabridged journals, supports that "When you die young like Dean or Monroe or Sylvia Plath, when your life ends in disaster, then you live on in legend, and you remain forever young." There is great debate between 'deciding' if Plath was indeed a feminist or not. Does she lead a role in the feminist movement today? Being honored in living through and between two of the greatest womens' right movements could sway Plath one way more than the other. Society had then split the decision of the debate. Some believe she is the face of feminism through literature, while others see no reason for her to be labeled a…

    • 1435 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    When speaking about Sylvia Plath a word too often use is Tragedy, the tragedy that was her life and the pain that ended it. Plath is known for her cynical twisted writing, but never too far from the truthful pain no one dared to speak about. Plath was far more than just a sad woman who made it an art form. Plath was more than other women on the Ted Hughes list of accomplishments, she was a literary genius and was a face of a movement that 50 years later is still worthy of praise. Sylvia Plath should be known for not only her literary accomplishments but the voice she created for women too not only speak about the unspeakable but to be open about the serious nature of mental illness. Sylvia Plath’s suicide is said to have overshadowed…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One can see that they had a huge impact on who Sylvia Plath was as a writer. “Sylvia Plath’s most famous poem, adored by many sons and daughters, is “Daddy”. It is a poem with an affecting theme, the feelings of the speaker as she regathers pain of her father’s premature death and her persuasion that has betrayed her by dying.” (Howe 1055). Sylvia Plath’s father died at a very young age, she was only eight years old. She always viewed her father as a strict man. Plath even compared her father to a Nazi. (“Panzer-man, panzer-man, O’ You”). This poem is a reflection of how Sylvia feels towards her father and the anger she has for him dying so young. “Sylvia Plath tries to enlarge upon the personal plight, give meaning to the personal outcry, by fancying the girl as victim of a Nazi father: “An engine, an engine / Chuffing me off like a Jew. . . .” ( Howe…

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plath began to stress about her teaching career. Her teachers that she admired as a student were not as pleasant as colleagues. She had extreme paranoia about her ability to teach but no one at the school could sense what was happening to Plath. Sylvia and Ted made a decision to leave the academics alone and continue writing. The year of 1958 was very stressful on Sylvia and Ted’s relationship. Ted felt she was complaining too much and she felt he showed poor manners. One day, Sylvia confronted Ted and caught him spending time with a young girl. Days after, they got into a physical fight where Sylvia was hit and Ted had markings on his face.…

    • 126 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Born in Boston, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a poet and writer. She was married to fellow poet Ted Hughes from 1956 until they separated in September 1962. They lived together in the United States and then England and had two children, Frieda and Nicholas. Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life. She died by suicide in 1963. Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for her two published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems, and Ariel. She also wrote The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death. In…

    • 1668 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Sylvia Plath

    • 1525 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Sylvia Plath poetry is unique because of her use of language and the perspective and themes she explores, creating powerful images and original metaphorical ideas to evoke a strong climax of feelings which express the struggles she experienced in her own personal life. Her poems ‘Lady Lazarus’ and ‘Daddy’ are confessional poems that use contemporary form and respectively a childlike and mocking tone to convey the persona’s mixed sense of emotions . Plath’s poetry utilises unique language to express her anger, hope, desire and disappointment. There is a constant suicidal motif in her poems revealing her personal issues and problems which are linked to male domination in the patriarchal society she resided in. It is unusual that Plath’s poetry is written in a strong female perspective contrary to the passive domesticity which women were meant to abide by in her 1950’s and 1960’s context.…

    • 1525 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Sylvia Plath, who is highly regarded as an acclaimed American poet and story writer, was born to Otto and Aurelia Plath on October 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. Sylvia Plath experienced a great deal of sorrow during her childhood because of her father’s death. Sylvia Plath expresses her ambivalent feelings and complex ideas about her father in her poems. Therefore, the poems reflected Sylvia Plath’s life. Lady Lazarus is Sylvia Plath’s one of her autobiography poems which stems from the author’s mind. The poem is written before her last attempting suicide, which she actually succeeded. The reader can use one’s imagination by reading her images and feelings in her confessional poem. In the poem, she reflected her hardship that she inevitably…

    • 1290 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hsc Paper

    • 792 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Ted Hughes’ ‘Birthday Letters’ is an anthology of poems which cover his personal view of his relationship with his first wife Sylvia Plath, a well-known poet, who’s most influential works were released in ‘Ariel’ and ‘the Bell jar’.( posthumously after her 1963 suicide) .The poems of Birthday Letters explore contradictory perspectives two of Hughes’ poems ‘The Shot’ and ‘The Minotaur’ which are significant as they delve deeply into his perspective of Plath, their relationship and private moments between the two. The 2003 film ‘Sylvia’, directed by Christine Jeff’s and is based on Plath’s own perspective. The use of slow rhythmic music (non-digetic sound) and a voice over presentive of Plath which positions , teamed with Sylvia’s hidden insecurities. Which are revealed in depth and persuade the audience to empathise with her thus contrasting with Hughes view.…

    • 792 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Sylvia Plath Poetry

    • 415 Words
    • 2 Pages

    2. Plath suffered from depression and Bi-Polar, pervious to her main period of writing, she had on one occasion attempted suicide.…

    • 415 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Plath’s concerns here reflect a classic theme of political ethics, the morality of ends and means, as well as relating to her anxiety and mechanization and conformism.…

    • 348 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Colossus. Sylvia Plath

    • 2667 Words
    • 8 Pages

    This poem by Sylvia Plath was written in 1959 and gave name to her first collection of poems The Colossus and Other Poems in which it is already included. This collection was published in 1960 and since this moment she was recognized as a young new talent because of her poetry techniques. Regarding some biographical data, we should take into account that Otto Plath, that is Sylvia’s father, died after a long period of untreated diabetes when she had just eight years old. Facing the death of someone you love is not something easy to deal with for an eight-year-old girl; she was strongly affected by the loss of her father.…

    • 2667 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    I agree with this statement to a large extent. Sylvia Plath uses startling imagery to portray her heightened emotions using the nature around her to create her poems. Plath’s poems are mainly focused around the theme of death and depression.…

    • 518 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I agree with the above statement that Plath’s poetry is “intense, deeply personal and quite disturbing” as it deals with the darker aspects of the human psyche. I also like how her vivid and violent imagery linger in the mind long after I have read the poems, which is very intense. There is certainly an unsettled and disturbing atmosphere that pervades Plath’s theme.…

    • 1386 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays