Explore Plath's treatment of death, ageing, birth and rebirth.

A detailed Summary of Explore Plath's treatment of death, ageing, birth and rebirth.

It appears that Plath has a morbid fascination and an obsessed attraction to death in most of her poems. Statements such as "I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty" in Tulips and "they will invite me to whiten my bones among them" in Wuthering Heights, show a longing to die and reveal a tendency toward suicide. Furthermore, Plath describes deathly images such as the "old beast", "stars letting in the light, peephole after peephole - a bonewhite light, like death", "the sky leans on me, me, the one upright among all horizontals" and "whitened by the faces of the drowned... leftover soldiers from old, messy wars". The "carcass" of the "monster of wood and rusty teeth" depicted in The Burnt-Out Spa strongly conveys pain and suffering still endured by the "old beast", even after death. Even positive images such as stars in the night sky are portrayed in a morbid fashion in Insomniac where Plath makes a clear link between the stars and death. Her feeling o!

f being pressured by nature into dying (i.e. becoming a horizontal) is cleverly but also oppressively put in Wuthering Heights, evoking the thoughts in her mind that she is unwanted and would be better off dead. This insight into her mind is re-echoed in

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Plath's affection for her born infant is shown in Morning Song too. The delicate cuteness evoked through the imagery and onomatopoeia of, "All night your moth-breath flickers among the flat pink roses" gives a less energetic but by no means less beautiful insight into the bond between herself and her new-born "sea". Even the baby's ear-piercing cry is awe-inspiringly described as pure enough to take "its place among the elements" and "your handful of notes; the clear vowels rise like balloons".

The pointlessness and futility of trying to escape death is described in Face Lift, where Plath assumes the persona of a friend in order to evoke the hopelessness of attempting to reverse time ("I grow backward") and prevent ageing: "the years draining into my pillow". The illogic of getting a face-lift arises through the irony that even after all the pain and torment that is endured from the operation, eventually ageing will catch up with you and turn you into the "old sock-face" that Plath's friend (and possibly Plath too) appears so terrified of.

Although in Suicide off Egg Rock, the rebirth of the man just before he dies is vivid and inspiring, "The forgetful surf creaming on those ledges", the majority of poems depicting a type of rebirth are quite cynical and sarcastic. Face Lift, for example, mocks the naivety of a woman

Some common words found in the essay are:
Lift Plath, Wuthering Heights, Egg Rock, Burnt-Out Spa, Morning Song, Furthermore Plath, , Insomniac Plath, wuthering heights, burnt-out spa, leftover soldiers, whitened drowned, prevent ageing, majority poems, insight mind,

Approximate Word count = 949
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English