Preview

Anne Sexton Suicide

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1989 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Anne Sexton Suicide
A super model turned poet who suffered heavily from depression and suicidal tendencies up until 1974 killed herself through carbon monoxide poisoning with a glass of vodka in hand, wearing an elaborate fur coat. Anne Sexton an American writer, born in 1928, battled depression, mania and suicidal tendencies her whole adult life as well as being diagnosed with what is now called bipolar disorder. Sexton had a family but suffered severely from post-natal depression after the birth of her first born therefore shortly after she was admitted into a neuropsychiatric ward and was continually transported in and out of institutions for the rest of her short-lived life. Sexton found an escape from her illness when writing poems, she is well known for …show more content…
This personal experience is evident in her poem 'Wanting to die' accentuated through personification and simile accent. Sexton uses personification brilliantly throughout her poem to capture the dominance and control her suicidal thoughts held over her. This technique dominates the poem much like how her thoughts dominated her life, 'and yet she waits for me, year after year, to so delicately undo an old wound." Sexton's suicidal thoughts become a woman and are given a supreme presence in the way she waits for Sexton, making it seems as if she has nowhere else to go, no matter what she does she is under the influence of self-harm. Sexton is the puppet and suicide is the puppeteer. Personification is used well to accentuate Sexton's personal story of having a long lasting struggle with suicidal tendencies and heightens her inability to control her own happiness by giving the thought processes the characteristics of power to control her mind. Simile is also used to effect to describe the sovereignty her mental illness had over her, the demining suicidal tendencies are compared to various things throughout the poem- 'Like carpenters they want to know which tools, they never ask why build?' Sexton explains the drive and persistence to commit suicide by comparing her final moments of how she would do it to carpenters tools rather than her incentive. Simile underlines the personal story successfully through the comparison of her suicidal thoughts to mundane presences, this works well to showcase her inner war between life and death, as it relates to a topic that not a lot of people have a full comprehension of, to things of common
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Comparative Study of Texts - Module a (Hsc) - W; T and John Donne
    • 1381 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Comparative Study of Texts - Module a (Hsc) - W; T and John Donne

    When deconstructing the text ‘W;t’, by Margaret Edson, a comparative study of the poetry of John Donne is necessary for a better conceptual understanding of the values and ideas presented in Edson’s ‘W;t’. Through this comparative study, the audience is able to develop an extended understanding of the ideas surrounding death. This is achieved through the use of the semi-colon in the dramas title, ‘W;t’. Edson also uses juxtapositions and the literary device, wit, to shape and reshape the meaning of the drama when studied in alliance to the poetry of John Donne. This alliance has been strengthened by the parallel of Vivian Bearing’s and Donne’s interpretation of life, death and eternal life. This enables the responder to recognise the higher concepts of death and its meaning.…

    • 1381 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Anne Sexton's Red Riding Hood
    • 648 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Anne Sexton's Red Riding Hood

    Sexton does this because she is trying to show readers the importance of recognizing people who rip-off others to gain personal benefits. The thesis of this poem is that there are many deceivers or people who would tell you the wrong information, and convince you to believe something which is not true with it’s purpose to manipulate and mislead . When Sexton says “The standup comic on the "Tonight" show who imitates the Vice President and cracks up Johnny Carson and delays sleep for millions of bedfellows watching between their…

    • 648 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Doomed In Their Sinking Summary
    • 740 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Doomed In Their Sinking Summary

    At the last line , Gass closes essay by saying ," Putting one's mother into words...It may have been easier to put her in her grave " .He also uses metaphors in reference to suicide, such as "their thoughts are open razors, their eyes go off like guns,...he own ocean like a message in a bottle so that she sank slowly somewhere as a stone sill sinks beneath the shoes of pilgrims and tourists, not like Plath with pills, or Crane or Woolf with water, Plath again by gas, or Berryman from a…

    • 740 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    How does Bruce Lundgren explores relationship in his Poetry
    • 838 Words
    • 3 Pages

    How does Bruce Lundgren explores relationship in his Poetry

    The similes used also created a mysterious image of death. It referred death as a delicate bird, gardener and nurse that is the opposite of what people sees it. This is rather elusive and slippery which highlighted the relationship of human with death, which we all know what death is but no one could ever get a close look at it.…

    • 838 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Quinceañera by Judith Ortiz Cofer: Freewrite
    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Quinceañera by Judith Ortiz Cofer: Freewrite

    Upon reading the poem, imagery can be found throughout the entire poem. For example, in the first two lines you can imagine a doll being put away like a dead child in a chest, you cannot bring a dead child back to life. This is the burial of her childhood only to keep her memories and carry them with her for the rest of her life. Also, the second to last line where she is “wound,” twisted, “like the guts of a clock,” referring to her stomach. She feels a sense of anxiety here. This is her final emotion to conclude the poem. She fears growing up because of the responsibilities she will have to take on, the shame she felt when her period started, will…

    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    51842401 Analytical Essay Between The World And Me
    • 837 Words
    • 3 Pages

    51842401 Analytical Essay Between The World And Me

    Wright uses embodiment to give the poem life and give the speaker in the story the ability to amplify his emotions of surprise, anger, and fear. In the beginning of the poem the speaker describes the scene as “guarded by scaly oaks and elms” as to say that nature guarded and preserved the scene. The speaker gives the woods life and creates an eerie feeling by saying the woods “guarded” the scene. Then he moves towards a discovery of white “slumbering” bones giving them human abilities of sleeping, which symbolize the eternal sleep of death. He uses this description early in the poem to say that someone has died here; this was their final place on this earth. Then as the speaker moves on in his story and horrifically shifts from the observer to the victim he portrays the dramatic changes in his surroundings “the ground gripped my feet; ... the sun died in the sky; a night wind muttered in the grass; … the darkness screamed with thirsty voices; and the witnesses rose and lived.” The speaker tells of his terror during his change using personification to give human properties to the woods as the ground immobilizes him, the light turns to darkness, the silence turns into chaotic screams, and the speaker relives the night of the crime.…

    • 837 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Sylvia Plath's Depression Reflected In Her Work
    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Sylvia Plath's Depression Reflected In Her Work

    Sylvia Plath, an extremely influential and beloved female poet who lived in the mid-20th century, was the author of numerous poems as well as the semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. Her work, especially that of her adult life, heavily reflects the darkness and depression that she dealt with. Plath, born in October of 1932, began writing at a very young age. Her first published work, titled simply “Poem”, was published before she had even turned ten. Plath wrote many short stories during her early years, and she even won several writing competitions. One of these was a fiction contest that earned her a position as guest editor at Mademoiselle…

    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Havisham by Carol Ann Duffy
    • 1243 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Havisham by Carol Ann Duffy

    She is displayed as a bitter, hateful character who seeks revenge, shown with ‘not a day since then I haven’t wished him dead’ and ‘give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon’. This is almost contrasted with her loneliness and sexual frustration explored in the first stanza, with ‘some nights better, the lost body over me, my fluent tongue in it’s mouth in it’s ear then down till I suddenly bite awake.’…

    • 1243 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Creativity vs. Psychological Health of Anne Sexton
    • 1173 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Creativity vs. Psychological Health of Anne Sexton

    The American Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Anne Sexton took her own life in 1974 via carbon monoxide poisoning before reaching the age of fifty. Her life and work are especially interesting because her poetry was clearly tied to her own psychiatric treatment. She began writing with only moderate formal education (a high school diploma), but after being published she was given honorary degrees from several universities, including Tufts, Radcliffe, and Harvard. Sexton's poems, many dealing with suicide, read together with richly researched recent biography, enhanced by biographer's access to tapes of Sexton's sessions with her psychiatrist and by foreword by that psychiatrist, permit unusual opportunity to understand the interrelationship of her illness, her treatment, and the meaning of suicide in her life. Whatever was on her mind seemed to come out in her poetry whether it was about sex, madness or death. “Readers tend to be generous in their praise, celebrating the poetry primarily because it so fully and openly reveals Sexton's personal pain” (Anne).…

    • 1173 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Pros And Cons Of Contradiction During The Cold War
    • 1577 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Pros And Cons Of Contradiction During The Cold War

    Cold War society often considered women as mere extensions of the homes they made, not as functional and participatory citizens of society. This popular view of women effectively “silenced” them. It was unacceptable at this time for a woman to demand a life of her own outside of the home. Her duty as a woman was to her husband, her children, and her home. This form of imprisonment contradicted the very ideals of freedom for which the woman in the home was supposed to represent. Anne Sexton, among several other notorious confessional women poets, reveals this Cold War hypocrisy and paradox through her…

    • 1577 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Mla Cinderella by Sexton
    • 1023 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Mla Cinderella by Sexton

    The majority of women of the world want to believe that they’ll find themselves a prince charming and have that perfect life until the day they die. Sexton puts all of these dreams into a realistic perspective that brings her audience back to reality. The poet mentions: “You always read about it:/the plumber with twelve children/who wins the Irish Sweepstakes./From toilets to riches./That story” (Sexton 620). The way the poet ends with “that story” shows the loss of hope that she feels from life and those happy ending stories. The audience gets these emotions from her writing in a very strong and raw way, she’s not afraid to speak the truth and take everyone reading her poems down with her. Her feministic ways come across her words like swords, and anyone who reads any of her poems will blatantly get this idea of her.…

    • 1023 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    “the Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window”
    • 1293 Words
    • 6 Pages

    “the Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window”

    What would you do if you were given what you thought was the perfect life and it suddenly seemed to turn upside-down? Would you jump to your death or climb back up? “The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window” by Joy Harjo is a poem about a women who is lost in this big world we live in and trying to find herself while hanging from a thirteenth floor window. While this woman is hanging there she starts to have flashbacks about her life starting from her childhood up until now. The author goes into detail about why this woman is thinking about killing herself because of all the pressures of trying to be some she is not is catching up to her. This poem represents everyday people and how they first have to overcome themselves and their lives before they can truly move on. This poem is about a woman not trying to commit suicide but women who represent bigger picture. The woman represents anyone and everyone who has ever had problems piled up on them, the author uses ethos, pathos and logos to persuade how our social roles constrains who we are as people and because of this the women is hanging by a short thread trying to find herself and put all the piece to the puzzle of her life back together again.…

    • 1293 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Suicide and Poem Courage
    • 731 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Suicide and Poem Courage

    Anne Sexton varies the types of figurative language used in her poem Courage to show the numerous examples of how it is shown, however she used metaphors for the more important things. In the first stanza, courage is being shown in little ways. Sexton’s poem is divided into four stanzas, each representing a different stage in life. The first stanza is childhood. The simile “the child’s first step, as awesome as an earthquake” is unique because it is meant both literally and metaphorically. Earthquakes are large and momentous, likewise is a child’s first step. Other events such as riding a bike for the first time and getting a spanking. This line in the poem (The first spanking when your heart/went on a journey all alone) is personification since a human heart cannot go on a journey, but it is also a metaphor saying the courage the child went through. Finally, in the first stanza, the last metaphor that is used is in the line: “you drank their acid/and concealed it”. The “their” that Anne Sexton is referring to is bullys, abusers, etc. The courage the child is showing is by “drinking the acid” which is representing the hurtful words or abuse, and then hiding the pain felt. The second…

    • 731 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Carson Mccullers The Haunted Boy
    • 995 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Carson Mccullers The Haunted Boy

    Dickenson confronts the idea of mortality, which no one prepares for and the idealisms of experiences that humanity succumbs to. Death comes to all and neither societal placement nor monetary means can stop the inevitable demise everyone must face. The author dictates this as ultimate sovereignty in comparison to the subjugation the world places on human beings. Dickenson clearly points at the seclusion that the souls of the dead encounters watching the people they love mourn their loss at their burial site. Once on these journeys, no one can transport a companion for the ride and the belongings that one acquires on Earth cannot follow them through the passing into immortality. The notorious element of reclusiveness that is not a desire of the protagonist identifies this piece as Gothic Literature. Dickenson brilliantly interjects poetic realism into the core of her opus with the most imperative aspect of it coming with transforming the burial mound into a release or goodbye to the lives the souls are inherently abandoning. The notions of the souls feeling sentiments for the relationships and artifacts one loses upon expiry conveys the female perspective of euthanasia that still possesses a dark foreboding tone that combines well with the isolation motif. This part of the poem reveals to the reader the message that the bondage of Earth transfigures into independence for eternity; following precisely the Feminine Gothic Literature elements of terror, powerlessness, solitude, and…

    • 995 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Abortion - Anne Sexton
    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Abortion - Anne Sexton

    'The Abortion' by Anne Sexton is a first person narrative poem in the style of a stream of consciousness and conveys a woman's emotional and physical journey whilst undergoing an abortion. I intend to discuss how through the effective use of imagery, tone, symbolism and word choice the poet successfully builds up an atmosphere which adds to your appreciation of the poem.…

    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More