Sylvia Conflicting Perspectives

Analyse the ways conflicting perspectives on events, personalities or situations are represented in your prescribed text, ‘Birthday Letters’ and the film, ‘Sylvia.’
In your response you should refer to at least two poems from the “Birthday Letters” Anthology and the ONE related text, “Sylvia.”
Conflicting perspectives on events, situations and personalities are created when respective composers write for a different purpose, directly linking back to their context, both personal and of production. It is from these conflicting perspectives we can gleam the purposes and contexts, and how time, relationships and other factors can impede on how we represent others and ourselves. This is directly reflected in the anothology of peotry ‘Birthday
Whilst ‘Red’ ends with a final tragic understanding of Plath’s psyche and how her death and desperate behavior were all at the cost of her gentleness and sanity, ‘Sam’ depicts Plath as malicious and intentionally violent towards Hughes and his reputation. As this poem is from earlier in the collection, an air of ambiguity, questioning and raw anger is present as Hughes continues to try to reflect that was tumultuous relationship he and Plath shared as well as her famous death. Hughes metaphorically describes himself as horse, sam, fed up with the antics of its jokey, Plath. The maliciousness is faced when Hughes uses juxtaposition to compare his action of ‘jumping the fence’ and Plath’s reaction as strangling him and throwing herself under his feet to trip him, whilst she died. This juxtaposition creates an air of ‘over the top’ behavior from Plath, whilst also constructing her death to look as a final deliberate malicious slight against Hughes. Contrasted with ‘Jumping the fence’, which can be assumed as a euphemism for his cheating, Plath is seen as unreasonable, unbearable and almost
Combined with the soundscape used in the movie, playing minor depressed chors whenever plath is sad or vulnerable, a perspective is constructed by the composer absolving all blame of the deterioration from Plath and placing it squarely on Hugh’s shoulders, the observed instigator of all unrest in the relationship leading to her eventual death. On the other hand, Hughes collection of poems point to two very different final perspectives. ‘Sam’s’ juxtaposition and extended metaphor of the horse create a malicious view of Plath, who as a response from the audience is perceived as the cause of the dysfunctional relationship through her overdramatic obsessive behavior. ‘Red’, however, places the blame of the disintegration of the marrige on no-one, both absolving Hughes from blame as much as Plath. While Plath is seen to cover the relationship in vile red, she is also seen as the victim of her mental state, covering herself in red to hide from her anxiety. Her fluctuating behavior is seen to be triggered by outside events such as her Fathers death, and Hughes is presented, by himself, as the hero who finally understands and forgives