Sylvia Plath Poem Comparison Essay
Sylvia Plath Poem Comparison Essay
Saying Sylvia Plath was a troubled woman would be an understatement. She was a dark poet, who attempted suicide many times, was hospitalized in a mental institution, was divorced with two children, and wrote confessional poems about fetuses, reflection, duality, and a female perspective on life. Putting her head in an oven and suffocating was probably the happiest moment in her life, considering she had wanted to die since her early twenties. However, one thing that was somewhat consistent throughout her depressing poetry would be the theme of the female perspective. The poems selected for analysis and comparison are, ”A Life”(1960),”You’re”(1960), “Mirror” (1961), “The Courage of Shutting-Up” (1962) and finally, “Kindness” (1963). All five of these previously discussed poems have some sort of female perspective associated with them, and that commonality is the focus point of this essay.
The first poem listed, “A Life”, was written in November 1960, and is a fairly long poem for Plath’s standards. There are eight stanzas, and thirty five lines, and one overall message. The general message of the poem is to discuss appearance and reality, and to compare them. Plath reiterates that appearance cannot be maintained, and she uses a mix of delicate diction in the beginning-to represent appearances- and transitions to aggressive diction when she moves back to reality. The female perspective is most prevalent when Plath starts the “reality” part of the poem, and talks about a woman, who seems to be hospitalized, and isolated like a “fetus in a bottle.” The idea of a troubled patient seems to be a personal reflection on Plath’s asylum days. “A Life” begins delicately, and Plath uses phrases such as “clear as a tear”, or “…glass…will ping like a Chinese chime… though nobody looks up or bothers to answer…” to create a sort of “fishbowl effect”- a fragile, yet isolated world, transparent and watched by others. Plath also uses water-like
Saying Sylvia Plath was a troubled woman would be an understatement. She was a dark poet, who attempted suicide many times, was hospitalized in a mental institution, was divorced with two children, and wrote confessional poems about fetuses, reflection, duality, and a female perspective on life. Putting her head in an oven and suffocating was probably the happiest moment in her life, considering she had wanted to die since her early twenties. However, one thing that was somewhat consistent throughout her depressing poetry would be the theme of the female perspective. The poems selected for analysis and comparison are, ”A Life”(1960),”You’re”(1960), “Mirror” (1961), “The Courage of Shutting-Up” (1962) and finally, “Kindness” (1963). All five of these previously discussed poems have some sort of female perspective associated with them, and that commonality is the focus point of this essay.
The first poem listed, “A Life”, was written in November 1960, and is a fairly long poem for Plath’s standards. There are eight stanzas, and thirty five lines, and one overall message. The general message of the poem is to discuss appearance and reality, and to compare them. Plath reiterates that appearance cannot be maintained, and she uses a mix of delicate diction in the beginning-to represent appearances- and transitions to aggressive diction when she moves back to reality. The female perspective is most prevalent when Plath starts the “reality” part of the poem, and talks about a woman, who seems to be hospitalized, and isolated like a “fetus in a bottle.” The idea of a troubled patient seems to be a personal reflection on Plath’s asylum days. “A Life” begins delicately, and Plath uses phrases such as “clear as a tear”, or “…glass…will ping like a Chinese chime… though nobody looks up or bothers to answer…” to create a sort of “fishbowl effect”- a fragile, yet isolated world, transparent and watched by others. Plath also uses water-like