Slyvia Plath Lady Lazarus Analysis

Slyvia Plath is an American poet, short story author and novelist who lived between 1932-1963. She is well known for her novel The Bell Jar, and for her poetry collections The Colossus and Ariel. Plath was diagnosed with major depression. The first onset of depression, at the age of 20, was associated with overwork and failure to get into a Harvard. She had psychological treatment for many times. Her emotional troubles were said to occur due to an bad relationship with her mother and the early loss of her father. She attempted to suicide twice, and for the third and the last time, she committed a suicide in 1963. In her numerous works the traces of her emotional and mental condition can be clearly seen. Sylvia Plath’s work is often self-portraying and really personal; her

In Slyvia Plath’s Lady Lazarus, we can easily see the traces of her frame of mind, her thoughts, her experiences, and her losing grip on her life.

First of all, when we look at the title of the poem we encounter with a great reference to Lazarus of Bethany, what is the subject of a prominent miracle attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus restores him to life four days after his death. Slyvia had tried to commit a suicide before she wrote this poem (can be seen in the first three lines “I have done it again. / One year in every ten/ I manage it——“), so why she gave the title “Lady Lazarus” can be because she believed that she was restored to life. Also she maybe believed that, if she tried to commit a suicide again, she would be saved once more; this can be inferred from the line “And like the cat I have nine times to die.” Moreover, this is obvious in line “A sort of walking miracle” that she sees that after multiple attempts at suicide she is still alive is a miracle just as