Nothing Held Nothing Left By Sylvia Plath

In this quotation, Plath begins to expresses her emotions of loneliness and vulnerability as she applies a certain emphasis on the word “alone” by giving life to “the black shadow” and creates a sense of emptiness through her repetition of the word “nothing” in the phrase “nothing held, nothing left”. The contrast of the joyful and imaginative atmosphere the author created in the beginning of the story, to the forlorn mood depicted in this quotation, further emphasizes the realism Plath now perceives. The last traces of fantasy and joy perish as “the blue capes”, exemplifying fantasy such as superman, and “the silver airplanes”, symbolizing Sylvia’s previous admiration of airports and flying, were all abolished. She further compares
the fantasy’s, she once dreamt of, vanishing to the “crude drawings of children” from the immense “blackboard of the dark” and how easily and simply the drawings can be “wiped away”. The author further uses symbolism when referring to children’s drawing, which conventionally represent joy and innocence, to express hopelessness and the use of a “colossal blackboard”, which ordinarily symbolizes an education’ enlightenment, to represent darkness. The author thus comes of age as she becomes more skeptical of reality and the world she lives in and as she relinquishes her fantasy world, along with her childhood innocence.