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=[|Sylvia Plath reading Daddy]= **Sylvia Plath**

Sylvia Plath was a daughter, mother, wife, etc but was most well known for her poetry. Her works were strongly based on her life experiences. In order to better understand her poems, it is important to know background information. Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 27, 1932 and died in London, England February 11, 1963 at the age of thirty. Her poetry was written post World War II and often portrayed her perspective on issues in Germany. Plath’s father died abruptly in 1940 when she was only eight years old. She wrote the poem “Daddy” in response to her feelings about his death (A Brief Guide to Confessional Poetry). Plath was a gifted student with a literary calling early in life. She attended Smith College and won numerous awards. During her undergraduate years she began to suffer under a severe depression. She attempted suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills in 1953. She went through many treatments including electroshock therapy. She recovered from her depression but was never genuinely happy. Plath met poet Ted Hughes in England at Cambridge University. They married in 1956 but that bond came to an end only six years later in 1962. She was left with two young children to take care of and wrote a collection of poems entitled Ariel that became her escape from reality. She became severely depressed once again. Plath took her own life at age thirty by inhaling gas from a kitchen stove. Before her death she was obsessed with suicide and the concept of dying which she incorporated as a common theme in her poetry. The poems often depicted despair and violent emotion. Plath’s poems explored her own mental anguish that derived from her troubled marriage with Ted Hughes, her terrible relationship with her father Otto Plath, and her own lack of self respect (Sylvia Plath). Plath wrote a copious amount of poems in which she gathered into collections such as The Bell Jar, The Colossus, and Ariel. She wrote many poems with an alias byline of Victoria Lucas. Feminists portrayed Plath as a woman driven to madness by a domineering father, an unfaithful husband, and the demands that motherhood made on her genius (Sylvia Plath 1932-1963). She was by all means a confessional poet, meaning she wrote about personal and private feelings of death, trauma, depression, and relationships. It was often in an autobiographical form (A Brief Guide to Confessional Poetry). Plath drew from other poets such as James Joyce, Feodor Dostoevski, Theodore Roethke, Emily Dickinson, and Anne Sexton. By: Sylvia Plath
 * “The Colossus”**

I shall never get you put together entirely, Pieced, glued, and properly jointed. Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles Proceed from your great lips. It's worse than a barnyard.

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle, Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. Thirty years now I have labored To dredge the silt from your throat. I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of Lysol I crawl like an ant in mourning Over the weedy acres of your brow To mend the immense skull-plates and clear The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.

A blue sky out of the Oresteia Arches above us. O father, all by yourself You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum. I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress. Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered

In their old anarchy to the horizon-line. It would take more than a lightning-stroke To create such a ruin. Nights, I squat in the cornucopia Of your left ear, out of the wind,

Counting the red stars and those of plum-color. The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue. My hours are married to shadow. No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel On the blank stones of the landing.

In the poem, “The Colossus”, Plath is the speaker, and she is addressing her father’s memory. She begins the poem with “I shall never get you put together entirely…” This introduction is a preface to the description of her relationship to her father. It shows the audience that she has not figured out all of the pieces and does not expect to do so. We know for sure that Plath is speaking of her father because of the reference “O, father” in line 17. Plath continues to portray her feelings of abandonment from her father that coincided with the deterioration of her personal life including an unfaithful husband, two children, and no money. The simile “I crawl like an ant in mourning” is Plath’s way of describing her small insignificance while suffering from her loss. She is also well known for her description through colors and the five senses and the mood that she sets through them. Her last three lines are those in which her personal feelings of withdrawal and giving up are clearly represented. Plath feels she has nothing to wait or hope for anymore. **“Blackberrying”** By: Sylvia Plath

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries, Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly, A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes Ebon in the hedges, fat With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers. I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me. They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks— Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky. Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting. I do not think the sea will appear at all. The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within. I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies, Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen. The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven. One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea. From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me, gapping its phantom laundry in my face. These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt. I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

Plath’s overall sense of hope being crushed is one that is recurring from poem to poem. She pushes the idea of failing hope. In her poem, “Blackberrying”, the literal interpretation as well as the underlying meaning are much the same. The narrator is looking forward to seeing the sea but in the end it is not there. This relates to Plath’s life in that she is looking for support from her family; in the end, her husband is unfaithful, and she ends up broke. She uses the flies as method of sarcasm. When she says, “The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.”, she shows her lack of hope for a god or for a future. Plath explains her beliefs towards religion in this line by leaving heaven lower cased and showing the flies as stunned. This poem is a great example of Plath’s use of the five senses. She describes the birds overhead as the “cacophonous flocks” giving the audience a specific sound. Imagery and personification are represented in the line “These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.” Plath shows the sense of taste but give the hills, an inanimate object, a humanistic ability. Her use of repetition is also interesting because of the words in which she chooses to use this technique include: beating, protesting, and nothing. This is a continuation of Plath’s overall theme of depression.

**“Daddy”** by: Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time-- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene

An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

The poem, “Daddy”, is one of Plath’s most popular works. It continues the ever looming dark, depressing, and blameful tone. I find it interesting that she chooses to use onomatopoeia as a literary device in line five when she writes “Achoo”. It was an inconsistent interjection that did not flow with the poem. It seems somewhat unnecessary but coincides with Plath’s use of the five senses. The similes within this stanza position the reader to see the great degree of suffering the speaker went through, as it is compared to the torment and anguish millions went through during World War II. This poem is full of references to Germany and the atmosphere throughout the war. Plath compares much of her father to Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany. By: Sylvia Plath
 * “Ariel”**

Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances.

God's lioness, How one we grow, Pivot of heels and knees! -- The furrow

Splits and passes, sister to The brown arc Of the neck I cannot catch,

Nigger-eye Berries cast dark Hooks -- Black sweet blood mouthfuls, Shadows. Something else

Hauls methrough air -- Thighs, hair; Flakes from my heels.

White Godiva, I unpeel -- Dead hands, dead stringencies.

And now I Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas. The child's cry

Melts in the wall. And I Am the arrow,

The dew that flies Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning.

Plath’s poem “Ariel” was put into a collection of her poetry entitled the same. Her writing style in this poem is different from most in that there is no rhyme scheme or meter evident. It is very punctuated and choppy. The usual flow is not present. In spite of the irregularity of the overall appearance of the poem, the ever constant colors do appear. The strength behind “Black sweet blood mouthfuls” is both frightening and beautiful. She uses the color white when referring to death as in the paleness of the body once it is without life. She continues her dark and disturbed theme of suicide. Plath also draws upon flies once again to stage her significance of death.

**“Cinderella”** By: Sylvia Plath The prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels, Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels Begin on tilted violins to span

The whole revolving tall glass palace hall Where guests slide gliding into light like wine; Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall Reflecting in a million flagons' shine,

And glided couples all in whirling trance Follow holiday revel begun long since, Until near twelve the strange girl all at once Guilt-stricken halts, pales, clings to the prince

As amid the hectic music and cocktail talk She hears the caustic ticking of the clock. This poem is one of my favorites because it is a very fluid poem and on the surface seems to contrast Plath’s themes of death and depression. The general idea of Cinderella is that of a princess like character. She is happy and hopeful. Plath begins with this character but in the end she dwells on nothing but the looming end. The couples are said to be in a “whirling trance”. This is Plath description of life as people are busy bustling through each day as if in a trance like state. They are dancing and going through the motions of what is expected at a party. In the end, her time is up. The ticking of the clock is one that cannot be stopped. Her lovely evening is done. This is a metaphor to life and when one’s time is up. The representation of color in the line “Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall” is one that gives the reader obvious images of the room in which these people are celebrating. In the end Plath’s views of depression win over the ever popular love story of Cinderella.