Sylvia Plath Poem Comparison Essay

Sylvia Plath, a successful confessional style poet, struggled throughout her life with issues revolving around her father’s death, unsuccessful and unfulfilling relationships with men, and her mental illnesses. Throughout her struggles, Plath wrote, sometimes writing as much as 10 drafts a day. Despite welcoming into the world two children, whom she loved dearly, Plath still felt unfulfilled by her duties as a housewife. As she wrote more poems, it became clear she was unhappy in her life and in the grips of a serious mental illness. Sylvia Plath’s writing is deeply influenced by her experience with mental illness and the death of her father in her early life.

Sylvia Plath was an American Poet who was renowned for poetry mostly in the United States. She, however lived a difficult and depressing life which led to a few futile suicide attempts, but ultimately led to a successful suicide attempt leaving her children to live on without a mother. This end result was due to a multitude of issues in her life from Sylvia’s sanity. She wasn’t the most stable child. Her marriage also played a role in her suicide. Her successes weren’t acclaimed until after her death, when a majority of her work was released. There were two major aspects to her life: her poetry and her sanity. These three combined make up a majority of Sylvia’s life.

Wrapped in gaseous mystique, Sylvia Plath’s poetry has haunted enthusiastic readers since immediately after her death in February, 1963. Like her eyes, her words are sharp, apt tools which brand her message on the brains and hearts of her readers. With each reading, she initiates them forever into the shrouded, vestal clan of her own mind. How is the reader to interpret those singeing, singing words? Her work may be read as a lone monument, with no ties to the world she left behind. But in doing so, the reader merely grazes the surface of her rich poetics. Her poetry is largely autobiographical, particularly Ariel and The Bell Jar, and it is from this frame of mind that the reader interprets the work as a

Sylvia Plath inserts both her feelings and life experiences into her literature- and was also highly influenced by Dickinson herself- but especially into her novel The Bell Jar. Plath uses parallelism to her benefit when she first attempted suicide in 1953, it is stated in the book just as Plath recalls the predicament and Plath admitted to saying herself that the attempt of suicide with her mother’s sleeping pills was “ blissfully succumbed to the whirling blackness to the eternal oblivion”(“Sylvia Plath”. Project Gutenberg) and goes into very immense detail of her thought process before the attempt to meet death. Stating this and reliving this in her novel only help her become new. Plath wanted to be better, so writing about it not only

In 1963 on a cold winter day of February 11th, Sylvia Plath ended her life. She had plugged up her kitchen, sealing up the cracks in doors and windows before she was found with her head inside of her gas oven inhaling the dangerous fumes. She was only thirty years old, a young woman with two small children and an estranged ex-husband. A tragic detail of her life is that this is the second time she had tried to commit suicide. Plagued with mental illness her whole life, which is evident within her poetry. She would write gripping, honest portrayals of mental illnesses. Especially within Ariel, the last poetry book she wrote, right before she took her life. Although it’s hard to find a proper diagnosis for Sylvia Plath, it is almost definite that she at least had clinical depression with her numerous suicide attempts and stays in mental hospitals undergoing electroshock therapy. Sylvia Plath is now famously known for her writing and the more tragic parts of her life. Such as the separation from her husband, Ted Hughes, mental illness, etc… Plath may not have intended for her life and art to become inspiration to many people but that has become the end result. Sylvia Plath writing shows symptoms of her suicidal thoughts. To study specific moments in Sylvia Plath’s life, it can be connected to certain writing’s of her’s, such as “Daddy”, The Bell Jar, and “Lady Lazarus”.

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) and Anne Sexton (1928-1974) both explored similar themes such as tone, structure, and symbolism. Many of their poems were cries for help, which resulted into metal illness, depression, and suicide. In 1958, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath met, and much to their surprise had a few things in common. They both were fascinated with death and suicide. Both Sexton’s and Plath’s poetry are considered as confessional poetry in which they were very honest, depressed, and had suicidal or homicidal tendencies. Sylvia and Anne’s views on what happened in their life and on independence, are what nearly separates them from other confessional poets. Sexton and Plath’s poetry range over a variety of topics such as death, suicide, rage, and mourning. They both utilize a convincing use of symbolism, deep image, metaphors, and soul-searching. Plath’s “The Colossus”, “Full Fathom Five”, “Daddy”, and Sexton’s “And one for My Dame” and “All My Pretty Ones”, are very enraged and different feminist perspectives, giving different views on the relationships with a father and a husband.

How Sylvia Plath's Life is Reflected in the Poems Daddy, Morning Song, and Lady Lazarus

Sylvia Plath is known as a profound writer, depicted by her lasting works of literature and her suicide which put her poems and novel of debilitating depression into a new perspective. In her poem “Lady Lazarus,” written in 1962, her mental illness is portrayed in a means to convey to her readers the everyday struggle of depression, and how it affects her view of her world, herself, and even those who attempt to tackle her battle with her. This poem, among other poetry pieces and her novel The Bell Jar, identify her multiple suicide attempts, and how the art of dying is something she has become a master of. Plath’s “Lady Lazarus,” about her trap of depression and suicide attempts, is effective and thought provoking because of her allusions to WWII Nazi Germany and the feelings of oppression and Nazism that the recurring images evoke.

Sylvia Plath was a troubled writer to say the least, not only did she endure the loss of her father a young age but she later on “attempted suicide at her home and was hospitalized, where she underwent psychiatric treatment” for her depression (Dunn). Writing primarily as a poet, she only ever wrote a single novel, The Bell Jar. This fictional autobiography “[chronicles] the circumstances of her mental collapse and subsequent suicide attempt” but from the viewpoint of the fictional protagonist, Esther Greenwood, who suffers the same loss and challenges as Plath (Allen 890). Due to the novel’s strong resemblance to Plath’s own history it was published under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas”. In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath expresses the

According to Allen Ginsberg’s quote, “poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does”, the common poet “makes the private world public”, or in other words, processes his or her personal life into stanzas of interconnected words. Bearing this in mind, Sylvia Plath, alias Victoria Lucas, was an American poet who portrayed an entire life soiled with problems regarding Ted Hughes (her ex-husband), Otto Plath (her father), and herself in between the verses of her poetry through the use of literary devices. In order to understand the subjects, language, tone, and purpose of her poetry in maximum depth, readers

Some of the dark negative emotions Sylvia Plath shares in this poem can make anyone have sympathy on her feelings. Especially, when she writes,

In her poem, “Lady Lazarus,” Sylvia Plath uses dark imagery, disturbing diction, and allusions to shameful historical happenings to create a unique and morbid tone that reflects the necessity of life and death. Although the imagery and diction and allusions are all dark and dreary, it seems that the speaker’s attitude towards death is positive. The speaker longs for death, and despises the fact the she is continually raised up out of it.

“My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.” Sylvia Plath was a poet in the mid-twentieth century who was best known for her dreary and depressing work. This poem, the Soliloquy of the Solipsist was one of her earlier poems being written in 1956. This piece takes the theory of solipsism, which was developed by Rene Descartes, and creates a story of living the life of a solipsist. Sylvia Plath uses imagery, enjambment, and metaphors in her poem Soliloquy of the Solipsist to express her feelings of isolation and to escape her powerlessness in daily life as a result of her new, romantic relationship.

Poets, Judith Wright, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickenson all express their views on life and death, however, do so in varying manners. Through imagery, Wright and Plath both consider life’s beginnings, however, Wright considers it to be a beautiful gift, whereas Plath views birth as an empty burden. Subsequently, through structure Dickenson and Wright each acknowledge life, expressing how in some cases it is difficult, yet in other circumstances it is celebrated. Finally, through tone, Dickenson and Plath convey their views on death, yet differ in that Plath believes it is purifying and holds a sick fascination with it, while Dickenson instead holds a unique curiosity about it. Therefore, whilst each poet recognises the journey of birth,

Eileen M. Aird analyzes and comments, “The danger of such criticism lies in its assumption that the poem is objectively ‘true’, that it bears a precise relationship to the facts of the poet’s life.” The direct criticism Plath puts upon her father is very crucial, yet evidently true if one was research her life. Sylvia Plath’s autobiographical poetry can be easily connected to her life and the answers to the many questions are easier to uncover than one may suspect. As her poetry developed, it became more autobiographical and although through her teenage years she possessed what seemed to be a rounded personality, the anguish and grief of her father’s death was easily linked with her mental instability that haunted her in the later years.