Allegory In Sylvia Plath

According to Joyce Carol Oates, Sylvia Plath, an extraordinary yet discouraging poet who has published pieces of poetry that have a heartbreaking quality about them. I agree, simply because it is in fact true. Plath has had a disturbing history of imagery situated in her poems. “Mirror,” “The Times are Tidy,” “Child,” “Poppies in July,” and many more.

Within in one of my favorite poems, “Mirror,” Plath experiments by telling the hidden story of this piece of poetry in the mirror’s point of view. “The eye of a little god, four cornered.” The mirror reflects what people see themselves, he is “not cruel, only truthful.” He is a god, impartial but ruthless, he can appear as anything with a reflection, “Now I am a lake.” We then become introduced to a woman who bends over the lake, “searching my reaches for what she really is.” This woman is Plath, she worries about how she is perceived, she sees herself as smothering and this mirror has a

“The Times are Tidy,” is a poem that needs to be read with an allegory, since it is a poem that needs to be read closely and not overlooked. Plath uses language of epics in this piece, such as “in the venture/Of riding against the lizard.” The lizard would be a dragon and during this time, dragons simply did not exist. In Plath’s opinion, they needed to coexist with us. The world needed magic. We should not have burnt “the last crone” even if the children will be better off and become safer. In Plath’s opinion, we need danger. In Plath’s opinion, we need obstacles to face. We need mystery. Darkness is required; a horrific opinion, but an opinion nonetheless. Plath wants all those myths back, she yearns for them. She dislikes society the way it is and wishes it to change, whether it be burnt down by a towering dragon or bewitched by a powerful crone. She wishes to feel the mystery course through her veins once