While reading Sylvia Plath's poems "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" one cannot help but be struck down by the prominent visual images and deeply emotional reflections both poems force upon the reader. While stylistically different, connecting these two poems is the inclusion of references to the Holocaust. What is interesting is that Plath never lived through the horrors of the Holocaust and was actually not even Jewish, yet she states that she is in these poems. While not wholly influenced by her education, in Plath's academic life the Holocaust seems to have been a constant topic in both high school and university. One of her classmates recalls how Plath's history teacher at Wellesley High School, confronted his class:

"Weary of our affluent, teenaged complacency, [he] had photographic blow-ups made of the inmates of Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald, Dachau and Auschwitz. These tragic, skeletal inmates looking out from their packed bunk beds in their ragged striped pyjamas stared down upon our crisply shampooed heads, giving us the shudders." (Strangeways, 371)

Her teacher used the images of the Holocaust in a similar way that Plath would later in her poetry-to sh

Her answer here, however, seems vague, made without much confidence and the poem speaks more for itself than Plath does. Through "Daddy" she also equates her father with that of a Nazi creating an image of him similar to that of Hitler with his "neat moustache" (Daddy, 43) and other Nazis with their "Aryan eye, bright blue" (Daddy, 44). As the lines "the boot in the face, the brute/Brute heart of a brute like you" break through with expressive force in the middle of the poem, the physical actions of the Nazis are also related to her father. Clearly, her life experiences with her father and her view of him after his death were a constant distressing strain in Plath's life.

Much like in "Daddy" Plath uses some autobiographical detail in "Lady Lazarus" as her references to suicide reflect her own experiences. Plath again equates her suffering with the experiences of the tortured Jews of the Holocaust and she becomes, as a result of the suicide she inflicts on herself, a Jew:

Plath's images of suicide in this poem are numerous. Whether she's equating herself with a cat who has "nine times to die" (Lazarus, 21) or explicitly stating "the second time I meant/To last it out and not come back at all" (Lazarus, 37-8) she makes it dramatically clear that she has "a call" (Lazarus, 48) to be suicidal. Using the Holocaust to make her suicide attempts more "theatrical" (Lazarus, 50) shows her ability to use political events in history to highlight her intense feelings. She shows, through this poem, that she lived in a state of personal turmoil, a life where the idea of death was evident on more than one occasion allowing her to escape it only briefly. Concentration camp survivors would echo her sentiments in that they faced death everyday but, in many ways, it was always out of their reach as they were forced to live through hellish experiences on a daily basis. Although more dramatic than Plath's own life, she too felt trapped in a depressing life unable, at times, to even kill herself to subdue the pain.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Bright Nazi, Using Holocaust, War Plath, Nazism American, Lady Lazarus, Plath Jewish, Dachau Auschwitz, Nazis Aryan, Jew Daddy, German Austrian, lady lazarus, images holocaust, own life, daddy lady lazarus, daddy lady, explicitly stating, bright nazi, concentration camp, holocaustic images, relationship father, generation american,
Approximate Word count = 1444
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)