The Theme Of Death In Ariel By Sylvia Plath

“Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. ” This famous line is an excerpt from the poem Lady Lazarus by the American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath (1932-1963). The idea of death has been prevalent in literature. Many poets often try to avoid this subject, but poets like Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson have embraced and upheld the theme of death in their writings. These poets dig into the dark side and often create unusual works. Death is represented by each poet from different perspectives, and it differs from one poem to another. It is often portrayed as a haunting complex phenomenon or a gateway to eternal life. Plath’s confessional poetry draws the readers in a way that they sink into her emotions, which can sometimes be uncomfortable. In an article in The New York Times print published on August 27, 1989, American poet Robert Pinsky wrote:

“Thrashing, hyperactive, perpetually accelerated, the poems of Sylvia Plath catch the feeling of a profligate, hurt imagination, throwing off images and phrases with the energy of a runaway horse or a machine with its throttle stuck wide open. All the violence in her work returns to that violence of imagination, a frenzied brilliance and conviction. ” (Section 7, Page11). Sylvia Plath’s works explore the themes of death, self-destruction and alienation. Her ability to express thoughts through certain themes in dynamic ways is the cause of her successful poetry. There are many elements of death in her poetry and is represented from different angles. Her poetry has a sense of darkness and is haunting, yet beautiful. Her writings display the state of her mind at that time and hence explore the psychological issues that she had. Plath’s Ariel, a collection of poems was published in the year 1965, two years after her death. She suffered from anxiety and depression and died at an early age of thirty by suicide. Many of her dark secrets are revealed in her final writings. This research aims to analyse the theme of ‘death’ in Ariel. The research will be undertaken in the following chapters:

• Chapter I: Introduction
• Chapter II: ‘Death’ in Poetry
• Chapter III: Ariel: A Review
• Chapter IV: ‘The Art of Dying’
• Chapter V: Conclusion

Chapter I: Introduction

The concept of death has been an important theme in literature. Aristotle in his Poetics proposed art as an ‘imitation of nature’; on that note, as death is a part of every man’s life, writers often presented the idea of death in their works. One of the oldest poems to involve the theme of death is the poem Iliad by the ancient Greek poet Homer. The idea of death is consistently used by many poets, and they portray it through various approaches. Death provokes dark consciousness, yet some writers embrace it. Sylvia Plath, a confessional poet and novelist suffered from anxiety and depression and covered plenty of dark and complex themes in her writings. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 27, 1932. Her best-known works are her novel The Bell Jar and her poetry collections The Colossus and Ariel. In 1982, Sylvia Plath won the first posthumous Pulitzer Prize. Plath developed the art of writing at an early age. She published her first poem at the age of eight in the children’s section of Boston Herald- a leading source of news, entertainment, and weather in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father died in 1940 which left an emotional impact on her and compelled her to write one of her most popular and powerful poems, Daddy. Plath studied in the Cambridge University, and this is where she met poet, Ted Hughes. The two got married in 1956 but unfortunately ended up having an unhealthy relationship. Plath was diagnosed with mental illness and tried to take her own life several times. In 1962, Ted Hughes left her for another woman named Assia Wevill. This gave her even harder times and at the age of thirty in 1963, she eventually died of suicide. In 1962, after being left, Plath wrote a good amount of poems which were later published by Ted Hughes in the collection of poems Ariel.

Sylvia Plath’s Ariel was published in 1965. It was only after her death that Hughes gathered her unpublished masterpieces and set a publication. This book is her second collection of poems, preceded by The Colossus. The volume contains Plath’s most popular poems like Lady Lazarus, Daddy, Morning Song, Ariel and Tulips. Most of these poems were written in the last few months of her life. This book is very much governed by the idea of death. The poems included are seen to be very personal. Plath was also known as one of the several poets to be associated with the school of ‘Confessional Poetry’. The voice of feminism can also be seen in her writings. Her works have received a lot of critical attention and are analysed profoundly. Robert Penn Warren, an American poet, novelist and literary critic called Ariel: “a unique book, it scarcely seems a book at all, rather a keen, cold gust of reality as though somebody had knocked out a window pane on a brilliant night. ”

Most of these poems have disturbing references and explore her mental state with intensive use of imagery. Plath shares her story by writing considerably dark poems. It seems as if her poetry and the idea of death are tied together. Sigmund Freud, the founder of Psychoanalysis, published a book called Beyond the Pleasure Principle in 1920. There he mentioned two human instincts: life instincts and death instincts. By introducing ‘death instincts’, he proposed “the goal of all life is death”. He says that people hold an unconscious desire of self-destruction; the same can be seen in Plath’s poetry. The poems in Ariel explore the idea ‘the art of dying’. Lady Lazarus, for instance, is a poem dedicated to the life of the speaker and her process of dying. She starts the poem with a reference to her suicide attempts; she writes “I have done it again. / One year in every ten / I manage it”. This poem also has one of her very famous lines “Dying / is an art, like everything else. / I do it exceptionally well. ” She makes it sound like she has mastered a skill. Lines “And I a smiling woman. / I am only thirty. / And like the cat I have nine times to die. ” remark Lady Lazarus as a confessional poem. Plath was also thirty at the time she wrote it and also her several suicide attempts can be associated with the poem. Her another dark and powerful poem Daddy is known to be about her father, Otto Plath, who passed away when she was only eight. The poem also tells that she felt compelled to get back to him. She writes: “At twenty I tried to die / And get back, back, back to you. ”, while suicide being a way to it. Apart from death, another most striking theme in this poem is the female protest against the male-dominated world. She constantly feels oppressed by her father and her husband. This study relates Plath’s life, her works and the idea of ‘death’. By analysing the selected poems from Ariel, it is perceived that death plays a vital role in Plath’s writings. It is portrayed both metaphorically and literally.

Chapter II: ‘Death’ in Poetry

‘Death’ is one of the major themes used by poets and authors. Throughout the ages, the theme of death has affected numerous works of art. It is a mystery that is continuously questioned in Literature and Philosophy. It has attracted large critical attention. In poetry, ‘death’ is presented from various angles with a wide spectrum of ideas. Many poets use darkness as a metaphor for ‘death’, but at the same time, many have a completely different approach. Some poets even describe death as relaxation after a long day. Poets use literary devices like metaphor and allegory to convey their thoughts. In Dylan Thomas’s poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, Thomas uses the cycle of day to represent life and death and to convey that death cannot be avoided. In the poem, light refers to life, whereas, dark or night refers to death. Some of the famous poems that focus on the idea of ‘death’ are: Out, Out by Robert Frost, Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson, Death Be Not Proud by John Donne, Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe and Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath.

In the poem Out, Out by Robert Frost, a boy accidentally cuts his hand and dies due to excessive bleeding. The poem focuses on how people react to death. Frost made proper use of imagery in the poem to express his views on human reaction. The lines “No more to build on there. And they, since they / Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs. ” clearly tells how people take little notice of death. Emily Dickinson’s Because I Could Not Stop for Death deals with an imaginative journey beyond the grave. In the poem, death is personified as a man who drives a carriage. Death stops for the speaker and she calmly accepts it. This poem throws a different light on death. It suggests that death is not something to be scared of as it is a part of nature and one has to confront it when the time comes. The fifth stanza conveys that she is comfortable enough to call grave a house. The lines “We paused for a House that seemed / A Swelling of the Ground -” indicate a mound from a grave. Death is not presented as something frightening, but instead as a guide to eternity.

John Donne’s poem Death Be Not Proud portrays that ‘death’ is not as powerful as it is thought to be. In the poem, death is personified as someone cruel and vain. Donne argues on how death is treated as something superior to the rest. He mocks the position of death. He instead calls ‘death’ a slave to fate. Donne also writes “One short sleep past, we wake eternally / And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. ”. According to Donne, one should not fear death, as it is just a short sleep and will lead to eternal life when one wakes up. It is not the humans that die, but ‘death’ itself. Humans live an eternal life. Edgar Allan Poe had a difficult life. He faced the death of many loved ones in his lifetime. This could be the reason that one of the major themes in his works is the theme of ‘death’. His poem Annabel Lee explores love and death. It is said that Poe wrote Annabel Lee for his late wife Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe. She died of tuberculosis in 1847 which left Poe devastated. This poem tries to point out that true love overpowers death or any other supernatural forces. The lines “And neither the angels in Heaven… beautiful Annabel Lee” from stanza five tells that in spite of his lover’s death, their souls remain connected to each other.

Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath is a dark poem and it deals with suicide and resurrection. The first line of the poem “I have done it again” indicates multiple suicide attempts. In the poem, the speaker, who reflects Plath herself, seems to have accepted death. The lines “Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. ” denotes that the speaker considers herself a master in dying as she has felt death several times. These lines make it sound like an achievement, but the thought behind is devastating. All-inclusive, it can be said that ‘death’ in poetry is a common subject but it does not have a single meaning. It is portrayed differently in different poems. Poems dealing with the theme of ‘death’ also explore the mysteries and complexities of life like immortality and eternal life.

Chapter III: Ariel: A Review

Ariel is Sylvia Plath’s wonderfully crafted second poetry collection. The last months of Plath’s life, the hard times she faced, acted as a fuel for her incredible poems sorted in Ariel. It is an outburst of Plath’s creative energy. The poems in this volume contain hallucinatory images and give us an insight into Plath’s mind. It feels like her life overshadowed her literary work. Robert Lowell, an American poet taught poetry writing at Boston, and Plath used to attend his poetry seminars. In the foreword to Ariel first edition, he remarked: “In these poems, written in the last months of her life and often rushed out at the rate of two or three a day, Sylvia Plath becomes herself, becomes something imaginary, newly, wildly, and subtly created- hardly a person at all, or a woman, certainly not another “poetess”, but one of those super-real, hypnotic, great classical heroines. ”

This poetry collection includes Plath’s most famous works. The 1965 edition has a total of forty-three poems including the most well-known ones like Morning Song, Lady Lazarus, Tulips, Ariel, Daddy, and Edge. In 2004, a new edition was published which also included some of the poems that were left unpublished. All the poems have common themes. The Ariel poems explore subjects like death, rebirth, mental illness, sexuality, motherhood and family relations. In a BBC script, Plath explained her poem, Daddy. She said: “Here is a poem spoken by a girl with an Electra complex. Her father died while she thought he was God. Her case is complicated by the fact that her father was also a Nazi and her mother very possibly Jewish. In the daughter the two strains marry and Paralyze each other—she has to act out the awful little allegory once over before she is free of it. ”

Plath’s style of writing has changed dramatically compared to her previous works. The poems included in this volume have Plath’s emotions and raw scandalous energy. In most of these poems, she uses the pronoun ‘I’, making it self referential. It is a journey into the depths of the poet’s unsettled mind, making some of the poems surreal. There is extreme use of imagery and the poems cast lucid emotions. This collection is very personal and illustrates her intensity as a woman and her conflicted mental state. The poems are so strong, the readers get sunk into the poetry and the poet’s emotions. The language used is harsh, yet there is beauty in the choice of words. Many Ariel poems also portray the female speaker to be against the patriarchy. The use of metaphors and imageries definitely made her poetry significant.

The darkly lyric poems address the psychological experiences of the poet. She portrays death directly or indirectly. In the poem Lady Lazarus, the speaker talks about her past suicide attempts. In a way, it seems that she celebrates suicide. Plath writes “The second time I meant / To last it out and not come back at all. ”. Plath makes extreme use of imagery in her poetry. In the poem Cut, the first stanza talks about the speaker accidentally cutting her thumb instead of the onion, then in the second stanza, she writes “Of skin / A flap like a hat, / Dead white. Then that red plush. ” The images portrayed are so vivid that one can easily picture the piece of skin, and can relate to it even without experiencing it. Plath is also considered to be a feminist. In the poem The Applicant, Plath has cleverly used the structure of an interview to bring out the social norms and the subject of marriage. In a nutshell, Ariel poems are mostly about a woman who is on the verge of taking her own life. There are plenty of dark and tragic facts in the poems of this collection and these are intense and hard-hitting. Though Hughes was criticized for excluding some of her works sorted in the actual manuscript, Ariel still stands out as one of the iconic works of art in the twentieth-century literature.