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How Does Sylvia Plath Have A Jewish Identity

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How does Plath's assumed Jewish identity in her Ariel poems compare with the actual cultural experiences expressed in the poems of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks? Sylvia Plath’s collections of poems in her final book Ariel invokes strong images of what she was going through in the last months of her life. Nothing is stronger than the images referenced in the poem Daddy of what the Jewish people went through in the concentration camps during World War II. Using strong words such as: An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew.(1) Plath’s words are used to try to convey her feelings of being imprisoned and locked away in her life. Both to her deceased father whose death she never really recovered from and also how she felt trapped at the time to her husband that had been unfaithful to her with an affair. Her feelings of her husband can be seen in this passage from Daddy. If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know.(2) …show more content…

But these images and assumed identity from Plath are feelings. Her father was not a Nazi or her husband a vampire. She was not Jewish or ever spent time in a concentration camp. But, by using these strong images, Plath is able to get across the feelings that she was going through during this hurtful time in her life. By taking on this identity of a Jew during WWII, she is able to show her feelings of what it is like being a victim with imagery that gets your attention and makes you notice and feel what she was going

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