“Inside The Dark Mind Of Sylvia Plath”
Sylvia Plath is considerably one of the greatest poets of the 20th century and a feminist icon. From losing her father as a child to then experiencing divorce in her late twenties she went through a lot of emotion which made her take her own life. Even though she was a really good poet and a great scholarship student, inside of her she carried a lot of pain and constantly was in a state of depression, which led her to attempt suicide and later on committing suicide. The way that she perceived things could be the source of her writing style. She stands out from other poets because her intense emotions are reflected from her poetry, and how she uses a masterful style of imagery to highlight her emotions and mostly her dark side of her mind. After the first attempt at suicide, she bounced back and wrote her collections of poems, before finally committing suicide. The collection “The Collected Poems” which was published after her death received the Pulitzer Prize, and she became the first to receive this prize posthumously.
Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 to a middle-class family near Boston. She had shown her talent for writing from a young age by publishing her first poem at eight years old. She spent her early life by the seashore, until her father died and the family’s financial situation changed so their life changed abruptly. Even during her teens she showed a great amount of talent for writing by publishing stories and poems on national magazines. She was a sensitive person, but she was a model student, straight A, and always winning prizes. As a scholarship student at Smith College she wrote over 400 poems during her studies. Because of the loss of her father and her suffering from depression she attempted suicide during her college years; however, she barely made it alive. She recovered and was diagnosed with a bipolar disorder per her journal entry, where she wrote: “It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative—whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it” (Poetry Foundation). Nevertheless, she went on to graduate with the highest honors which earned her Fulbright Scholarship to Cambridge, England.
During her life in England she met and married the fellow English poet Ted Hughes, with whom she had two children. After a few years their marriage disintegrated, leading Plath into depression once again. It was during this time that she had an intense burst of motivation and creativity, since these were difficult times for her. These poems were published after her death, because she took her own life. Sylvia Plath had only published two major works during her lifetime: The Bell Jar, a semi-biography where she explained her first attempt at suicide, and The Colossus, a poetry volume. Both of those works received warm reviews, however she became really famous after the publishing of Ariel, the collection of her last poems, where she includes some vivid imagery and reflection of strong emotions. In these poems she masterfully highlights emotions about death, how it affects her mind, and details reflect how her psychic pain becomes inevitable. One of the most vivid poems of her is “Daddy”, in which she explains her emotions after her father’s death.
In her poem “Daddy” we can see her style of writing, full of surreal imagery, memories from her childhood, and a dark language which reflects her dark side of the mind. She also uses some German to reflect the fact that her father was German. The poem consists of 16 five line stanzas, totaling 80 lines poem full of emotions, imagery, hatred, dark and painful feelings. She uses metaphors and similes to create a picture on readers’ mind while also comparing her memories to the Holocaust that happened a year before she wrote the poem. She starts the poem with the repetition of the sounds of ‘oo’ to symbolize the train reaching its destination at the death camps. She is comparing her dead dad with a black shoe while she (the reader) is trying escape. Then she continues to explain how she is mad at god because her dad died. She also uses some surreal imagery by comparing her dad’s toe, who had gangrene, with a seal. She also mentions how she used to pray for him, while having flashes of memory with beautiful imagery such as: “Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. ”
She moves on to her dark side in the fourth stanza, by adding a relation to Poland the place where her dad was born. She also mentions that this place had been in many wars, and Germany might have been also the cause, since her father was German but from a Polish town. She then addresses her dad as you in the next stanza where she speaks from the heart: “I never could talk to you”. Also hints that she has some kind of difficulty to communicate. Then includes German for the first time by saying “ich”, she is also comparing her father to all Germans, and says that he represents them. Meanwhile, the train is moving towards its destination, but it is no ordinary train it is the train to Auschwitz - concentration camp. She says that she has been thinking and acting like a Jew, so she identifies with the Jews that have been cruelly murdered by gas. (She also committed suicide by gas). Then she continues to mention the origins of her mother from Vienna, and how she might be a Jew because she carries a Taroc pack of cards. She also mentions that she has gypsy blood because these cards were used to predict fate.
In the ninth stanza she goes back and focuses on her father, how she was afraid of him because he reminded her of Nazi soldiers. She uses some dark language and adds details such as Luftwaffe (German air-force), Panzer (German tank), and description of Aryan male to truly define what Germans were trying to do, creating a pure race. She then uses a metaphor where her father is now the Nazi symbol - Swastika, and how he was a brute like the Nazi soldiers in boots. Plath then continues by using her personal memories about her dad, and the picture she has of him standing at the blackboard, since he was a teacher. She expresses her emotions how his death has left her brokenhearted and how she tried to kill herself to reunite with him. However, she says that they saved her and tried to put her together by glue, meaning by the doctors. She also tells her dad that she made a model of him while still mentioning Hitler’s book Meinkampf to create an image in reader’s mind. This new model introduces a new male character that she encountered in her life, and that is her husband Ted Hughes. She confirms this in the line stating “I do, I do” where she expresses he love and acceptance for marrying him. With this stanza (stanza 14) she addresses her dad for the last time meaning that she won’t be able to communicate with him again and that she is past him already.
In the next stanza she says that if she could kill one man she could kill two. Meaning that she had went through a tough break-up with her husband, describing him as a vampire who has been sucking her blood, so it was time for her to forget about her husband the same way she forgot about her father. But has she really forgotten him? She explains in the last stanza that her dad’s fat black heart has been pierced by a stake, and now the village is happy. While villagers are dancing and stamping on the dead dad’s body, she calls him a bastard and tells him that she is through. However, the villagers can be from the imagination of Sylvia Plath, because she had been through tough times and was in depression. Since “Daddy” is part of the volume of poetry Ariel, that was published after her death. The poems in Ariel, written before her death were mostly about her dark side of the mind, her thoughts while in depression, and difficult times which made her stand out with her style of using imagery to express her emotion. However, there are also poems contrary from this on where Sylvia Plath wasn’t occupied by dark thoughts and she wrote great poems such as “Metaphors”, in which she describes her pregnancy with metaphorical language and images.
“Metaphors” was a poem written by Sylvia Plath when she thought she was pregnant, and tried to express how she would feel to be a mother; which later happened and she became a mother. She uses a unique style, the poem consists of a single stanza with nine lines and each line having nine syllables. Even though the poem is short, the author manages to create numerous images in the readers’ mind about how pregnancy looks. This poem was published in her volume of poems “The Colossus” during the years that she was married to Ted Hughes, and they were living a happy life. So this poem is different from the one mentioned above. The poem starts straight away with a metaphor, just like the title suggests. She makes it obvious that the nine syllables of the riddle are the nine months of her pregnancy. The style of the whole poem is nine syllables per line, while containing a metaphor or more per line. She creates the image in reader’s mind that how a pregnant woman is heavy carrying the extra weight with her, and thus resulting in moving slower like an elephant. She also mentions ponderous house, reinforcing the idea of moving slowly because of the extra care that she has to do now that she is pregnant. In the third line she continues to use imagery and metaphors to explain how a pregnant woman looks. By comparing the swollen stomach with a melon she creates a funny image in reader’s mind while speaking about fertility.
She then tries to explain how the pregnancy is similar to the melon (specifically watermelon), since the waters break at the end of pregnancy. And she uses metaphor for the red fruit, ivory, as it is red just like the blood. Then continues to compare the stomach with dough and when it is warm the dough rises so does the stomach with time. Again she compares the stomach purse and now introduces the child as money, and that the purse holding the money has value so does the stomach having the child. She then states that she sees herself as a cow having a baby calf in, but she is also is hopeful that she won’t lose her value after bringing the child to life. She hopes not to feel only like a carrier, and after the baby is born she will feel empty. She also says that she is a stage, which can be correlated with the stages of pregnancy and she is moving from early pregnancy towards giving birth. The bag of green apples can be related with the Apple that Eve gave Adam and for which they were banned, which means that women have to carry the child and suffer the pain of childbirth. It could also mean that she has eaten a whole bag and she is full, the stomach is swollen. In the end she finishes that the train is boarded and there is no getting off, meaning that both the mother and the baby have to wait until the end of the journey - pregnancy for nine months.
The two poems give us a clear view how depression has made Sylvia Plath’s style unique. We can also see from the two poems how different her bright side and her dark side of the mind are. In the first poem she is using metaphors and imagery to describe her hate, anger, meanwhile in the second poem she uses metaphors to compare pregnancy to various things and in a funny way. She does all of this while creating images in reader’s minds. Her life was a roller-coaster but she showed her talent to the world and it is highly appreciated to this day. We can only imagine what she could have written if she didn’t end her life.
