The Transition in Sylvia Plath’s Work - 1438 Words

Life has been some combination of fairy-tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self-questioning. --The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath It has been almost 50 years since the American literary community lost one of its greatest treasures, Sylvia Plath. Even in recent days, numerous scholars are still studying many admirable qualities in Plath’s collection of work. She has developed a unique writing style and performed thoroughly at an early age. Over the years, the events of her life highly affect the focus of her work. This transition is evident in her use of colors, object, and most importantly, her purpose for producing each poem. Plath’s development is presented clearly in her juvenilia poem†¦show more content†¦The beginning of the feminist movement did not help Plath to seek independence. Instead it indirectly caused a new round of obsession of doubting her ability to write. According to Pamela J. Annas, â€Å"Sylvia Plath’s sense of entrapment, her sense that her choices are profoundly limited, is directly connected to the particular time and place in which she wrote her poetryâ €  (Annas). Allusion is a typical strategy that is used in Plath’s work. â€Å"A Life† indicated the return of darkness in her work, and the sorrow sensation was noticeable via dramatic object change. The frustration of being haunted by unhappiness results in an invisible â€Å"bailiwick† that is â€Å"clear as a tear†. The description of round shape â€Å"bailiwick† further demonstrated how the sickness has overpowered her: â€Å"A woman† is â€Å"dragging her shadow in a circle†, and for a life, she wishes that â€Å"it won’t shrink like an eyeball†. The actions of flicking the â€Å"glass† with a â€Å"fingernail†, and listen to the sound â€Å"ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir† are parallels with some of the images she later elaborate in the novel â€Å"The Bell Jar†. They illustrate what is it like to live in the bizarre, hollow mental prison she built around her. And in the followin g three lines, she wrote out her disappointment of being ignored by the closest ones in life: â€Å"Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer. Every one of them permanently busy.† Those words indicated how they truly tear Plath’s heart into pieces.Show MoreRelatedContributions Of Sylvia Plath1302 Words   |  6 PagesHenrik Ibsen’s pivotal work regarding social and moral issues of his day and Sigmund Freud’s writing pertaining to peoples’ mental health are just a few of examples of profound writers who contributed to the growth and development of literature. Sylvia Plath was also a profound writer and one of the most respected poets and prose writer of her time as well. She was once described as â€Å"one of the most celebrated and controversial of postwar poets writing in English† (â€Å"Sylvia Plath†). Many of her poemsRead MoreSylvia Plath is an American Writer who Writes Confessional Poems about her Life1117 Words    |  4 PagesSylvia Plath is an American writer, commonly known for her poetry works. Her poetry can be categorized as â€Å"confessional poetry†, which are poems about the poet’s personal life. Her two most famous published collections of poems are The Colossus and Other Poemsand Ariel, but it was not until after Plath’s death that The Bell Jarwas published. The Bell Jar is considered a more personal and semi-autobiographical novel. Throughout Sylvia Plath’s lifetime, she suffered mentally since she was a littleRead MoreOne Art By Sylvia Plath Critical Analysis1446 Words   |  6 Pagesmissing sock to the often overwhelming loss of the death of a loved one, loss comes to everyone in various forms. The nature of loss, however, makes it a rich topic for poetic endeavors. In both â€Å"One Art† by Elizabeth Bishop and â€Å"Lady Lazarus† by Sylvia Plath, the poets write to conceptualize and understand their losses, ultimately applying radicall y opposing solutions to the same emotional struggle. Elizabeth Bishop was a high-caliber poet known for her excellent use of form and technical geniusRead MoreEssay On Sylvia Plath1607 Words   |  7 PagesEveryone knows that life is hard. But for some, it’s as if life itself picked them out to labor the worst of what it has to offer. Sylvia Plath was a confessional poet, using her personal experiences and very real situations to give â€Å"negative† emotions the artistic charm and characteristics traditionally saved for â€Å"positive† emotions. Her father died in her eighth year of life, and although this event tormented her until her own death, time went on. She married Ted Hughes, the two of them encouragingRead MoreEssay on The Dark Life and Confessional Poetry of Sylvia Plath2207 Words   |  9 Pagesand family. An important contributor to contemporary and confessional poetry was Sylvia Plath, who employed personal aspects of her life into her style of confessional poetry. Plath suffered from a deep depres sion that influenced her to often write in a dark, melancholy style. This depression included two suicide attempts of which she wrote before succeeding in suicide at the age of 30. An important facet of Plaths poetry was the distinctive development of the speaker, who, in her poem Gigolo,Read MorePersonal Ambition And Self Respect By Mary Jane Ward s The Snake Pit, The Bell Jar1461 Words   |  6 PagesPersonal Ambition and Self-Respect in The Bell Jar Inspired by Mary Jane Ward’s The Snake Pit, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath was released in 1963 and discusses a great deal of how difficult it was to be a woman in the 1960s. The 1960s was a struggling time for women; society set standards that women felt obligated to follow. Society told women that their only jobs were to get married, have children, and become homemakers, and if a woman did not fall under all of these categories, she was consideredRead MoreSylvia Plath Mad Girls Love Song Analysis1487 Words   |  6 PagesThe Eternal Dance of Dualities. Sylvia Plath wrote â€Å"Mad Girl’s Love Song† in the early fifties while she was an undergraduate college student. The poem is written in the villanelle poetic form of which it reflects not only the rigorous fixed format, nineteen-line with two repeating rhymes and two refrains but also the melancholic tone and rhythm of the traditional dance song—in vogue in Italy and France during the sixteenth century—in which its roots lie. The title itself offers a plausible explanationRead MoreHow To Write Literary Analysis4174 Words   |  17 Pagesof your own life. There are as many different, valid ways of reading a book as there are books in the world. When you read a work of literature in an English class, however, you’re being asked to read in a special way: You’re being asked to perform literary analysis. To analyze something means to break it down into smaller parts and then examine how those parts work, both individually and together. Literary analysis involves examining all the parts of a novel, play, short story, or poem—elementsRead MoreLiterary Group in British Poetry5631 Words   |  23 Pageswide in breadth. Beowulf is the only heroic epic to have survived in its entirety, but fragments of others such as Waldere and the Finnesburg Fragment show that it was not unique in its time. Other genres include much religious verse, from devotional works to biblical paraphrase; elegies such as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Ruin (often taken to be a description of the ruins of Bath); and numerous proverbs, riddles, and charms. With one notable exception (Rhyming Poem), Anglo-Saxon poetry depends