TOEFL® essay samples: Imagery in 'Daddy' and 'Lady Lazarus' by Sylvia Plath

[Hopeless_Girl]

In poems of Sylvia Plath, entitled “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy” some elements are similar, including used hostile imagery, gloomy atmosphere as well as recurring theme of suicide and death, but the poems differ in respect of the speaker’s point of view and attitude towards addressed person or unfavorable surroundings. These elements are employed by Plath in order to intensify the impact on her audience and convey all extreme emotions. Another issue that is considered to be worthy of thinking over is the question why the poet refers to Holocaust and compares her own personal experience to the suffering of the Jews in Nazi concentration camps.

In spite of the fact that, in “Lady Lazarus” in contrast to “Daddy” there are some allusions which point out a self-portrait and transition of person who was describing to the one described, both poems are equally controversial. The main reason of this are references to Holocaust used by the poet. The comparison of her own personal experiences to suffering of Jews during the Second World War seems to be a trivial trick, which purpose is to draw attention of a potential reader and shock him. Needless to say, she could never imagine their humiliation. It may be said that both poems are filled with expressions implicating mass extermination: in “Lady Lazarus” : “my skin /Bright as a Nazi lampshade” (4-5) evoking associations with using materials of human origin by Nazis and “Ash, ash…A cake of soap, /A wedding ring, /A gold filling.” (73-78), Jews were deprived of everything, what had represented a material value. As far as “Daddy” is concerned, the reader must confront himself with “An engine, an engine/ Chuffing me off like a Jew. /A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.” (31-33). The latter image may suggest goods trains heading for death camps or ovens where bodies of prisoners were cremated.

Other recurring element is theme of a suicide. Plath’s knowledge of a breakdown and painful methods of its treatment became a material contributing to poem “Lady Lazarus”, especially when the speaker comes back to life after mental illness by decomposition and then regeneration:
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

So on, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman. (13-19)
She is seeking relief in death, that is to say she wants to find an escape from reality impossible to endure and in which mentally ill person has to live. First of all, she recalls “an accident”, when she was only ten (36). Most likely, it is an allusion to her father portrayed in poem “Daddy”. She describes then her attempted suicide saying: “The second time I meant /
To last it out and not come back at all.” (37-38) The same theme recurs in the other poem: “At twenty I tried to die/ And get back, back, back to you. /I thought even the bones would do.” (58-60).

Moreover, statement such as “dying /is an art, like everything else,” (43-44) declared by Lady Lazarus, is a reflection of the poet’s own opinion, who said in interview: “I believe that one should be able to control and manipulate experiences, even the most terrifying - like madness, being tortured…I think that personal experience should not be a kind of shut box and mirror-looking narcissistic experience. I believe it should be generally relevant to such things as Hiroshima and Dachau and so on.” In other words, suffering of one person is a part of whole mankind history, although experience of an individual is by no means comparable to mass destruction. In general, every failure or disappointment is enclosed with the circle of death altering with resurrection. According to the speaker of “Lady Lazarus”, it is possible to impose meaning on something as unintelligible as, for instance, breakdown. Physical destruction cannot destroy human dignity: “Out of the ash /I rise with my red hair /And I eat men like air.” (82-84). A victim becomes a winner and triumphs over omnipresent, cruel men who marked her life with pain, what was shown in “Daddy”.

I haven't finished it yet, the lack of the second paragraph and conclusion is obvious. Writing this paper is a condtion on which I can get a pass from literature classes. I appreciate your attention

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