Sylvia Plath’s father died when she was eight years old due to complications of diabetes (Steinberg 2007). He is already dead; Sylvia Plath wrote this poem when she was 30, but in stanza 2 she says “Daddy, I have had to kill you. / You died before I had time—“(lines 6-7). What she is killing is the memories of him; he died too early and has caused a great amount of grief. This poem is angry, perhaps because he left her when he died while she was so young. Throughout the poem Sylvia Plath uses words like “achoo” and “gobbledygoo” giving the poem a childish feel, as it uses these themes of the Holocaust and vampires, adding a contrast. The poem also has an irregular rhyme scheme using the “oo” sound. There is no evidence from sources that Sylvia Plath’s father was ever abusive to her, so one can conclude that the loss was so immense, and caused so much pain, that it was like if she was being tormented.…
Plastination is a technique that challenges the boundary between science and art. Bohannon asks, “Can a dead human body be a piece of art ‘about’ the human body?” (59). The author at first seems doubtful that this is art, but then answers her own question with observations an artist might make. In the plastination factory, she states it reminds her of descriptions she’d read of “Warhol’s ‘factory,’” but is troubled that Dr. von Hagens’ “‘materials’ were once living, breathing people” (Bohannon 61). She remarks that the “muscle has strings of viscous pink connecting it to the table,” but she “can’t help but think of the feet of dancers, incredibly strong, but hopelessly mangled” (Bohannon 63). While observing a vat of liquid, the author realizes that there is a corpse in the liquid, but the liquid is “candy pink, like cheap bubblegum, Pepto-Bismol, Pokemon pink” (Bohannon 63). Also, when viewing a camel on display, she convinces herself that “This isn’t the work of purists or simple anatomists. This room is a workshop for artists” (Bohannon 65). While holding of the smoker, Bohannon finally hears “the message spoken in an unfamiliar language – a language made of breath and blood and finality” (69).…
At the last line , Gass closes essay by saying ," Putting one's mother into words...It may have been easier to put her in her grave " .He also uses metaphors in reference to suicide, such as "their thoughts are open razors, their eyes go off like guns,...he own ocean like a message in a bottle so that she sank slowly somewhere as a stone sill sinks beneath the shoes of pilgrims and tourists, not like Plath with pills, or Crane or Woolf with water, Plath again by gas, or Berryman from a…
So we ask ourselves, how does poetry gain its power? To answer this question, we examine the work of poets Harwood and Plath. ‘The Glass Jar’, composed by Gwen Harwood portrays its message through the emotions of a young child, while the poem ‘Ariel’, written by Sylvia Plath, makes effective use of emotions to convey artistic creativity and inspiration.…
Phil Conrad is the Granite Quarry city manager so that means he manages a larger amount of things from the task and accommodations that the town does and he also manages the some people that work for the city. He has a lot of things he does everyday to keep the city a safe and clean city by setting up people to clean it and getting groups together for crime watch. Some of the skills it takes to have his job is patients and time to do the job. You will also need to be very understandable so that the job can get done right.…
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.…
Sylvia Plath? Have you heard of her? Well, Sylvia Plath is a well-known poet, novelist and author. Plath was born during the great depression influencing her writing style. At a very young age she lost her father and since then she began lose faith. She also became ambivalent about religion all throughout her life. Plath was a very smart student and was accepted into Smith College in America. During her stay in college she was accepted as an editor for a magazine, during she spent time in New York. Plath started to write the bell jar in which during this time she started to feel depressed. She tried electroconvulsive therapy but it did not work. She decided to commit suicide by overdosing herself but failed. Later on her life she then tries to commit suicide and then succeeded by inhaling gas from the gas oven and suffocated.…
It is understatement to say that both Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin have immense depth and subsidiary meanings to their poems, both writers expertly structure their poems and used varied techniques to convey their themes of death and instil their messages to their readers. Plath goes about it an autobiographical manner and parades death as a theatrical show leaving the audience in shock and awe however Larkin presents death in a rather trivial manner in comparison to Plath. He juxtaposes the everyday street scene with horrific. He uses the ambulance as a momentary that death is every present and our lives ultimately lead to the journey of death.…
It is often said that conflict of some kind is at the heart of every narrative, and behind and within the poems in Birthday Letters Ted Hughes grapples with a range of conflicting perspectives, some of them internal, on the tragic outcome of his marriage to the poet Sylvia Plath. There are certainly conflicting perspectives on situations, events and characters in these poems. Referring to two poems, “Fulbright Scholars” and “Your Paris”, we will find how Hughes has created those perspectives. The movie Sylvia (2003) is especially interesting as it draws on the same situation, but the perspectives are different and the way they are created is very different. In both of these examples studying how the perspectives are created does make the texts…
Some people argue that artists sometimes inherit similar but different qualities which may set them apart or bring them to be very alike. Through a careful analysis of Cam Heather’s article, “Sylvia Plath’s Debt to Anne Sexton,” one can argue for her claim on the striking comparison between Plath and Sexton. She set Plath an example by tackling private and deeply personal material in an outspoken and colloquial fashion in the first person. Plath later acknowledged the liberating influence that Sexton and Lowell had on her poetic development.…
Where are the declarations of her accomplishments? Her creative writing workshop or the prizes she won? Those who spoke at the funeral shared tales of her childhood experiences and short stores to bring light to the situation. None did her justice. In my mind she was one of the greatest writes of all time and these stories were not meeting my expectations. I went home and wrote my own paper to hand deliver to her grave the following day where she lay alone, next to an empty plot intended for her widower.…
Sylvia Plath, a phenomenal author whose book The Bell Jar informed the world about her life as a woman in a man's world while suffering from depression which took her life in the end. Writing a book in such an era, during the twentieth century when it was more common for a woman to stay home instead of going to work or having her own identity. Sylvia Plath managed to publish a book as such however after her death. This paper revolves around the ideas and mentality of the late twentieth century regarding women and depression which many people were not aware of, treating the sufferers with techniques which were not only horrific but inhumane.…
The 1960’s were a very influential time within history. The period, after world war two saw the return of conservatism as society needed and wanted to control our war torn, uncontrollable world. However, the 1960’s began to shake the rigidity of conservative beliefs. This essay will look at Sylvia Plath’s poem, The Applicant, written in 1962 to explore the gender roles in early 1960’s society. The theme of Plath’s poem is the inequitable idea of gender roles in early 1960’s society, men were expected to be the breadwinner and women were expected to cook and clean. In addition, the poem is a reflection of the relationship between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, illustrating the absurdity of their relationship. In saying this, the poem could be…
Application Paper: The Bell Jar The Bell Jar, a novel by Sylvia Plath, gives a detailed story of Esther Greenwood, a young, bright, and extremely talented young woman. The novel begins with Esther’s life in New York where she works for a magazine as an editor. Her time there is filled with stress from the other college girls in her dorm, a dwindling love life, and constant deliberation over the direction of her life. The novel chronicles how these stressors take an insidious form in her life, leading her to a psychiatrist, electric shock therapy, and thoughts/attempts at suicide.…
In the Poem “Lady Lazarus”, poet Sylvia Plath uses allusions, symbolism, and irony to convey to the audience the theme “Oppression leads to an eventual rebellion.” The poems shows Plath’s own suicide attempt and tells us little of the actual event. Plath’s suicide and depression dealt with multiple factors such as the death of her father, her struggle for her power as a woman in her society, several publishers’ lack of interest in her early poetry, and the affair by her husband Ted Hughes. Plath’s poetry struggled to become published because she lived in the Patriarchal period where women were rarely known for many accomplishments. Another reason is because critics said that some if not all of her poetry dealt with death and suicide.…