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Sylvia Plath: A Brilliant but Tortured 20th Century American Poet
One of America's best known twentieth century poets, Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) lived an artistically productive but tragic life, and committed suicide in 1963 while separated from her husband, the British poet Ted Hughes. Before her death at age 30, Sylvia Plath had suffered a bout of severe depression for several months, the likely result of her separation from Ted Hughes and her strong suspicion of his adultery with the English poet Assia Wevill ("Sylvia Plath"; "Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963" 2). Sylvia Plath had also made several previous suicide attempts, beginning at age 20, or perhaps even earlier, always precipitated by the spells of depression and debilitating self-doubt that dogged the poet from early adolescence on (Neurotic Poets, Sylvia Plath 6-7). As Plath wrote, in her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, published in January 1963, less than a month before her suicide, in describing a suicide attempt by her main character Esther Greenwood:
It would take two motions. One wrist, then the other wrist. Three motions, if you
Counted changing the razor from hand to hand. Then I would step into the tub and lie down. (165)
According to a posthumously-produced video biography of Plath, numerous critics and biographers of hers have suggested that Sylvia Plath tended to romanticize the idea of suicide, both in her writing and in her own life ("Sylvia Plath"). As Clarissa Roche, an American friend of the poet and her husband's living near them in London at the time recalls, in that video biography: "Sylvia loved to show her wrists. She spoke of 'having a go' at suicide, like someone 'has a go' at tournament tennis" ("Sylvia Plath"). Additionally, one of...
Sylvia's beloved father, Otto, died of complications in 1940, which left the eight-year-old Sylvia deeply depressed, and may have been a catalyst, as well, for the poet's lifelong struggles with depression ("Sylvia Plath"). The video "Sylvia Plath" also describes Aurelia Plath as being excessively pushy and ambitious for her brilliant only daughter's academic success, a sort of academic "stage mother," and of Sylvia's father as having been, before his death, the parent to whom Sylvia had been much…
Works Cited
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.
- -- . "Daddy." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X.J.
Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 4th Compact Ed. New York, Longman,, 2005. 830.
- -- . "Lady Lazarus." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X.J.
"Sylvia Plath." Neurotic Poets. 1 Dec. 2004. <http://www.neuroticpoets.com/plath/>.
'Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963." Sylvia Plath. 30 Nov. 2004.
Sylvia Plath's Daddy Any attempt to interpret a work of literature by a writer as prolific, as pathological, as tormented and as talented as Sylvia Plath requires a good deal of caution. A lot of Path's work is biographical -- one might successfully argue that the vast majority of the work of virtually any author is biographical to a certain extent. For Plath, however, this association between art and life, poetry
There were also a few children's books by Sylvia Plath that there publish which include: "The Bed Book" (1976), "The It-Doesn't-Matter'Suit" (1996), "Collected Children's Stories" (2001), and "Mrs. Cherry's Kitchen" (2001). In conclusion, Sylvia Plath is a great American poet, short story writer, novelist, and essayist that provided the world with many great poems, short stories, prose and essays. For most of her short life, she suffered from clinical depression,
Ultimately, Lady Lazarus uses her status as a failed suicide as a source of power, not disempowerment. The haunting words of the end of the tale that she is a woman who eats men like air are meant to underline the fact that despite the fact that the doctors feel that they are the source of her coming to life again and again, there is a strength of spirit within
Sylvia Plath's poem "Tulips," the speaker is a sick woman in bed in hospital. She weaves in and out of a drug-induced sleep, and much of the poem reads like a hallucinogenic stupor. The reader perceives the hospital room through the speaker's eyes, which focus especially on the colors white and red. White represents the peace and calm of snow, winter, nurse's caps, and purity. The red of the
The reader must search for the theme of the poem, and only from learning about Plath's own life can ascertain that the subject. Plath's esoteric references are less accessible than Lincoln's musings about suicide, death, and hell. However, both Plath and Lincoln do directly mention death in their poems. Lincoln's narrator mentions in line two of "Suicide's Soliloquy" his "carcass" and then in line three, the "buzzards" that "pick
The poem "Daddy" thus chronicles a personal misery that is shared by all of Europe, bleeding its collective wounds of guilt at the end of World War II. This sense of the personal and the impersonal becoming melded into poetry is what gives "Daddy" its power. Everyone, not just everyone with a personal, historical family connection to the Holocaust can understand the speaker. She is everywoman, and perhaps everyone who