essay on the confessional poem "lady lazarus"
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5 points are very less.......
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poet Ted Hughes, though after adultery on both sides occurred, the marriage finally ended. After the end of the marriage, her suicidal tendencies began once again. Lady Lazarus is a confessional poem, as it was written during that feverish time in her life, It is a complex analysis of her love hate relationship with death and suicide. After reading the title a first impression is made, of a biblical allusion. In the book Johns Lazarus of Bethany, Lazarus is resurrected from the dead by Jesus.In the poem
Her choice to change the gender of Lazarus to a lady projects a feminist ideal, an image of a female that’s powerful. The strong theme of death and decay of human flesh is throughout the poem. Plath also uses historical allusions of Nazis and the Jewish Holocaust. The poem uses, morbid, symbolisms that evokes chilling imagery.
My face featureless, fine Jew linen’. The ‘miracle in this stanza biblically alludes to Lazarus rising from the dead. “Peel off the napkin O my enemy Do I terrify? ” The last stanza at the start of the poem, include the first use of sarcasm which is used again throughout Lady Lazarus. Plath is daring her enemy to ‘Peel off the napkin’. Then in a more threatening tone asks, ’Do I terrify? ’ in the introduction she is addressing a singular person/enemy. As the poem progresses, the reader become numerous, as her identities are discovered.Lady Lazarus has to be a different voice or character for each one, though none of these personalities are bearable to her. “The nose, the eye pits the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day:” The fifth stanza is the beginning of Lady Lazarus recovering from her third suicide attempt.
The capitalisation of the word three exhibits her thoughts on this being an, exciting event for her, in which the numbers are likely to grow. This also translates Plath’s romantic and passionate relationship with death. Then her boastful manner turns to disgust, with a personification of death as a love object, which is portrayed in, ‘what a trash/to annihilate each decade.
’ The word trash is a very colloquial slang term for garbage. The next stanza is written in a simple, buoyant style.Throughout the poem she chooses a flippant style to describe the seriousness of death and suicide. This evokes a feeling of disturbing tension.
The constantly shifting tone and style appear as the monologue of Lady Lazarus. She speaks spontaneously from her pain, bitterness and anguish. In which the dominant effects are derived from colloquial, conversational language.
The plain, simple style is given greater power, when keywords and phrases are obsessively repeated. Eileen. M. Aird states in ‘Sylvia Plath: Her Life and Work,’ When analysing the style of Lady Lazarus; She takes very personal, painful material and controls and forms it with the utmost rigour into a highly wrought poem, which is partly effective because of the polar opposition between the terrible gaiety of its form and the fiercely uncompromising seriousness of its subject. ” (Sylvia Plath; Her Life and Work.
Aird, 1973) The next part of the poem is a continuance of her self-disgust. The ‘million filaments’, could be a representation of the many pieces of her life being on show, ‘the peanut crunching crowd’ has dissected these fragmented pieces over a long time.The other people in this audience of business men and media are the doctors, Plath’s father and husband. She uses the American slang word ‘shove’ to portray the crowd as eager and aggressive. An illicit source of arousal is being offered to the crowd, as ‘The big strip tease’, is performed. All as her morals and ideals for women disappear