The Bell Jar By Sylvia Plath Analysis
Sylvia Plath, born October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts, was a poet, and short-story writer (Hobsbaum, 2003). As part of the Confessionalist movement, she commonly wrote about topics such as death, depression and victimization. She has published a series of poems and a semi-autobiographical memoir that depicts her life, with the names of people and places changed. Her semi-autobiographical memoir, The Bell Jar, depicts Esther Greenwood’s slow downward spiral to madness. Plath was deeply affected by the premature death of her father, her mental instability being worsened by the absence of her mother. The lacking of two parental figures served as a serious detriment to Plath’s overall health and made an impact on her writing. Her personal …show more content…
Villanelles are a type of fixed verse poetry with a strict and demanding structure. It is a six stanza poem, the first five stanzas containing three lines, a tercet (Michno, 2000). The concluding stanza, contains four lines, also called a quatrain. The first and third lines of the first tercet are repeated in the last lines of the remaining stanzas. The quatrain at the end of the poem contains both lines repeated. These repeated lines are referred to as the refrain. The refrains and fourth line in the last stanza all rhyme with each other. The key aspect of repetition in villanelles is very important to the overall meaning and interpretation of the …show more content…
Thunderbirds are from Native American mythology, they are powerful spirits in the form of birds (Britannica). They are described to die in the winter but return return during the spring. Plath’s choice of this mythological creature introduces idea of love that she so desires, one that comes back rather than being fleeting. This in essence, captures her desire for consistency. Plath titles her poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song,” which can be interpreted as her referring to herself as mentally unstable. Typically, love songs are usually about romantic love, and the experiences that love and heartbreak bring. Rather than this love song being about a sexual relationship, Plath writes about her deceased father. The death of Plath’s father when she was only 8 years old made a significant impact on her. The structural form of the villanelle and its overall rhyme scheme also contributes to Plath’s presentation of her feelings as a love
Diction And Tone In Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar
409 Words | 2 PagesIn her novel, The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath uses diction and tone to juxtapose the internal strife a character may experience with an an external normalcy. Protagonist Esther Greenwood exemplifies the tear that can occur between society and one of its members. The repetition of the word and idea of death is prevalent throughout the novel, found a majority of the time within Esther’s internal dialogue, portraying that she is obsessed with death, but contains it in her mind to avoid others knowing. Her reason for her secrecy reveals itself to be fear of appearing outside society’s realms. She proves this when each attempted suicide takes places far from the presence of others, such as her basement or any empty beach.
Sylvia Plath Biography
1361 Words | 6 PagesSylvia Plath was an American author and poet born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 27, 1932. She is most recognised for her only novel The Bell Jar, and became the first person to receive a post-mortem Pulitzer Prize. Plath began writing by keeping a journal at a young age, after publishing several entries she won a scholarship to Smith College in 1950 (“Sylvia Plath Biography”). While studying, Sylvia Plath was accepted as a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine in New York.
Analysis Of Nab Enlightenment
983 Words | 4 PagesMost lines of the poem are different lengths. There are no sentence fragments but, there are sentences made of only two or three words opposed to the few sentences that make up several lines. This use of compressed language is significant because it is allowing the author to say something great or profound without having to use lots of words. By doing this, it gives the reader room to analyze what the author is trying to say and come up with their interpretation. The first short phrase is “A marvel.”
At Seventeen By Sylvia Plath Essay
549 Words | 3 PagesPerhaps being born a woman—whose stack of duties was laid over the ground of ambition—led to the exceptional rasp of her nature. In Plath’s piece “At Seventeen” she uses diction and stylistic devices to convey that in order to achieve to achieve happiness, young
Catcher In The Rye And The Bell Jar Analysis
3428 Words | 14 PagesIn the two novels, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, the protagonists are similarly faced with deaths and being unable to accept the society in which they live in, which lead them to go a bleak journey to get a way from it all. I was attracted to these two works because of the controversies they struck. This essay aims will aim to explore the question: “Does Holden and Esther’s characters develop in The Catcher in the Rye and in The Bell Jar respectively?” This investigation first examines the theme of death in both novels to reveal the development characters achieve from it.
Birds And Other Things We Placed In Our Hearts By Timmy Reed
1259 Words | 6 PagesThere are many different forms of literature out in the world. They come in forms of novels, short stories, articles, and poems. They help people by allowing them to be informed about certain topics and they even make people forget about their daily lives while they enter a totally different world. If literature never existed nobody would obtain new information, they wouldn’t escape reality, famous authors wouldn’t be famous, and publishers wouldn’t be publishing any great works of art. What makes literature, literature, is its wide use of imagery and symbolism.
Literary Analysis Of Daddy, By Sylvia Plath
838 Words | 4 PagesShe addresses her father as “daddy” like a little kid, speaks in a child-like abrupt manner, and begins the poem with “you do not do/you do not do/ anymore black shoe,” lines that resemble the old nursery rhyme “There is an old woman who lived in a shoe”. However, this is not a happy child, but one with frustration and unresolved conflicts with her father, as she calls him “evil” and a “bastard”. Furthermore, the way an adult woman completely turns into her childhood self suggests an obsession and a fixation within the past, a phenomenon commonly associated with psychological deficiencies stemming from unsolved childhood issues. These observations correspond to how the speaker metaphorically refers to her father as a “black shoe” that she had to live in, showing her inability to overcome the shadow of her late father. Thus, by addressing him directly instead of referring to him in the past tense, the speaker confronts her obsession and tries to escape the
Compare And Contrast Sylvia Plath And My Papa's Waltz
846 Words | 4 PagesSylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” are similar because they focus on the same subject. However, they differ in how the speakers’ feel about their relationship with their parent(s). In Plath’s “Daddy”, the speaker is a daughter thinking about how her father treated her. She tells about how she felt trapped by him and how she tried to ‘kill’ him, line 6 of the poem, but he dies before she has a chance. The ending of Plath’s poem implies that she got married to a man like her father.
My Wicked Ways Analysis
693 Words | 3 PagesA poem written almost 3 decades ago, can be assumed to symbolize the childhood of the speaker. My Wicked Ways radiates an unsatisfied tone from the speaker, has a unique rhythm and meter of poem, and attributes different sound and consonants to help the poem flow better. My Wicked Ways radiates an unsatisfied tone. Sandra Cisneros reminisces about her childhood and her father
Rhetorical Devices In The Bell Jar
2037 Words | 9 Pages1. Introduction Published in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, The Bell Jar has aroused the interest of scholars all over the world. One of the most often discussed characteristics of The Bell Jar is its use of similes, metaphors, and symbols. Throughout The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath employs rhetorical devices to paint a vivid picture of its protagonist Esther. This essay will discuss how Sylvia Plath uses figurative language to represent Esther’s feelings of insanity, anxiety, and freedom.
Compare And Contrast Angelou And Paul Laurence Dunbar
535 Words | 3 PagesHis poem Sympathy is just one example of how he felt trapped like a caged bird in his life. Even though the Civil War was over, African Americans still did not have as many privileges and opportunities as most White people had. Most of Dunbar’s writing showed his perspective of life and the struggles that came with it. Maya Angelou was born in 1928 and suffered a hard childhood that later on affected her writing. When she was eight years old, Maya was sexually abused and raped by her mother’s boyfriend.
Sylvia Plath Poetry Analysis
1947 Words | 8 PagesThe collective body of Sylvia Plath 's poetry demonstrates definitively her mastery of her craft. Plath has been criticized for her overtly autobiographical work and her suicidal pessimism, however, close study reveals that her poetry transcends categorization and has a voice uniquely her own. As Katha Pollit concluded in a 1982 Nation review, "by the time she came to write her last seventy or eighty poems, there was no other voice like hers on earth" (Wagner 1). In works such as "Lady Lazarus," "Daddy," and "Morning Song," Plath relates her own painfully experiences in the form of dramatic monologues using a persona who eventually triumphs over adversity by regaining the self that had been lost before the struggle of the poem. According to Plath, the narrator of "Lady Lazarus" has "the great and terrible gift of being reborn . . .
Analysis Of The Bell Jar
1021 Words | 5 Pages(Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar). She sees death as a beautiful thing therefore, she is blinded by the beauty of death, to see the beauty of life. She had failed in life, because she stopped trying, or she never tried at
Critical Analysis Of The Bell Jar By Sylvia Plath
1755 Words | 8 PagesThe Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is a semi-autobiographical novel in which Plath relays her own experiences through protagonist Esther Greenwood by highlighting the struggles she faced in navigating societal expectations, depression, and her own desires. Having spent time in college and later in multiple mental health institutions, Plath tells her story through Esther in a way that blends fiction and reality. Through Esther, we see Plath’s own interpretations of her triumphs, failures, values, and the slow but seemingly inevitable diminishment of her mental health. The story starts with Esther Greenwood in New York City, where she is spending a month working at a magazine because she won a scholarship to a special summer program for female writers.
Feminism In Sylvia Plath's Poetry
922 Words | 4 PagesSylvia Plath is considered to be one of the most significant female poets known not only to Americans but also to the whole world. Her death in 1963, followed by an unfortunate and short life did not end her input and influence inliterature, she became an icon to the female literary society. Sylvia's outstanding style of writing and themes which she portrayed in her works such as death, seeking for an identity or oppression on women in a patriarchal society began the feminist movementin America and changed the role of women. This topic is of a great importance because they way that Sylvia Plath was expressing her feelings and showing her negative view on a patriarchal society and oppression on women was a giant leap in the world of a women's liberation movement.
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