Preview

What Is The Tone Of The Colossus By Sylvia Plath

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
544 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
What Is The Tone Of The Colossus By Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 In Massachusetts. She published her first poem at 8 years old. She was a perfectionist and an ideal student. Her father died when she was eight and that’s when she started to change. She attempted suicide in college by overdosing on sleeping pills, but once she recovered she became successful in literacy. She wrote over 400 poem while in college. She married Ted Hughes in 1965, and a year later, at age 28 she published her first book, The Colossus, in England. She lived for a time in England and had a total of 2 children. Two years after the birth of their first child their marriage fell apart. Usually Sylvia turned to writing poems to cope with her problems and it was something to do in the middle of the …show more content…
It is a free verse narrative poem. I find this poem has a lot of depth. It has a tone of softness yet is kind or horrific. I don’t know exactly what Sylvia was trying to express in this poem. It seems to me like she wanted to be remade, turn back time, and make everything better. She could have possibly done something she regretted or simply wasn’t happy with the way she was and she wanted that to change. The whole poem is like a metaphor, comparing her life to a facelift surgery. At the beginning, she is sick and is unsure (like Sylvia’s father’s death), and then she thinks of the results from this pain, results that will make her beautiful. She is out for 5 days in secret, almost as if she’s ashamed of going through with it,(like when she attempted suicide) but once she wakes up she has grown younger(changing her life around and becoming successful at college). Although she will continue to age she has trapped the old lady, the past her, in a laboratory jar where she will continue to wither (the troubles she is having with her husband). However, the new fresh woman is pleased with the results and is like a new woman who can start over her life.(This her life with poetry and nothing else but unfortunately she doesn’t start over she ends it

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Sylvia Plath’s father died when she was eight years old due to complications of diabetes (Steinberg 2007). He is already dead; Sylvia Plath wrote this poem when she was 30, but in stanza 2 she says “Daddy, I have had to kill you. / You died before I had time—“(lines 6-7). What she is killing is the memories of him; he died too early and has caused a great amount of grief. This poem is angry, perhaps because he left her when he died while she was so young. Throughout the poem Sylvia Plath uses words like “achoo” and “gobbledygoo” giving the poem a childish feel, as it uses these themes of the Holocaust and vampires, adding a contrast. The poem also has an irregular rhyme scheme using the “oo” sound. There is no evidence from sources that Sylvia Plath’s father was ever abusive to her, so one can conclude that the loss was so immense, and caused so much pain, that it was like if she was being tormented.…

    • 1791 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    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
  • Better Essays

    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
  • Better Essays

    Perhaps the first thought to mind when the name Sylvia Plath is mentioned is pure ironic tragedy. What a destructive death for a woman with a seemingly jubilant life. It is know to most that she was a poet and author beyond her time, beaming with creativity and writing poetry in her early teen years. However, with longing for fame struck the bittersweet reality of holding the title for the most unfortunate life. How can it be, that a woman struck by dire occurrences, leave such an incredible mark in the guest book of all great authors and poets? It seems to be true that many a melancholy poet, tend to be of the male gender; at least those who are greatly remembered and studied. So why is Plath one…

    • 1435 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Steven Gould Axelrod is an expert in nineteenth and twentieth-century American poetry, and his book “Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words” was published in 1990. Sylvia Plath was an American poet, born in 1932, and died in 1963 when she committed suicide. I totally agreed with Steven Gould Axelrod’s idea in this book, especially when he said that the poem “Daddy,” Sylvia’s most famous poem – is dramatic and allegorical. At the beginning of the book, Axelrod mostly focused on Sylvia’s life and how “Daddy” was brought into the world, then in the middle of the book, he compared how Sylvia described her father in her two poets, “Daddy” and “The Colossus,” and at the end, he continued to compare the figure “I” in “Daddy” and “The Colossus,” Sylvia herself identity.…

    • 769 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hughes who was a poet himself was less known for his work and known more for his affairs. She was often compared to his other women, even in her death was her name still used in vain of his mistakes. Ted Hughes was sleeping with other poets, the most infamous was Assia Wevill who sadly also killed herself and the daughter she and Ted Hughes had the same way Sylvia herself ended her life. For a long time till this day Sylvia Plath is labeled as a depressed artist and Assia as the mistress. Ted Hughes tarnished two careers that women worked so hard to built. To say that Sylvia Plath’s sadness came from the affair would be ignorant to ignore the fact that Plath was battling an inner demon of mental illness almost all her life. Ted Hughes wrote in his collection called Birthday Letters. "Fame cannot be avoided. And when it comes / you will have paid for it with your happiness, / your husband and your life." As to blame her suicide on her face, the one thing she worked so hard to build was the thing to destroy her. Ted Hughes is obviously wrong and oblivious that Plath’s success was her voice, that she I believe even in her death wouldn’t want anyone or any man to speak for her, she let her literature do that for…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Dying is an art, like everything. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call” – Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts on October 27th, 1932 and died in London, United Kingdom on February 11th, 1963 at the age of 31 years old. Sylvia is well known for her astonishing poem such as “The Bell Jar” and “Daddy”. Her parents were Aurelia Schober, who was a student at Boston University and Otto Plath, who happened to be Aurelia Schober’s professor at the time (Academy of American Poets). “In 1940, when Plath was eight years old, her father died as a result of complications from diabetes. He had been a strict father, and both his authoritarian attitudes and his death drastically defined her relationships and her poems—most notably in her elegiac and infamous poem "Daddy."” (Academy of American Poets).…

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plath struggled with her mental issues from a young age. Plath’s mental state was plagued “…by insecurities with money and social status….”(Hobby). While Esther suffers from similar insecurities while she is in New York. While staying in the Amazon, she remarks about the girls with wealthy parents that are staying at the hotel. She even states how jealous their wealth makes her (Plath 5). Both women suffered greatly with their mental demons. Plath’s insecurities and stress eventually caused her to spiral into a deep depression, which led to her suicide attempt (Snodgrass). Esther spiraled into a similar depression. Esther, after returning home from New York, attempted to write a novel. She struggles and slowly sinks into her work (Plath 138). The stresses of her work consume her until she can't sleep and stops taking care of herself (Plath 142). This eventually forces her farther down into her depression, which leads her attempt to kill herself to end the stress. Plath stressed over her work and pushed herself until she was no longer stable (Hobby). She distinguished herself academically and socially with her writing (Hobby). Three years of constant stress led Plath to attempt suicide (Hobby). Esther’s decent into her suicidal spiral was due to the pressures she placed upon herself. Not only did Esther decide to write a novel, she took honors courses…

    • 1310 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    People write poems for various reasons. The purpose of this poem is that the poet wants us to learn how special the past was to her and how the present has destroyed that past. It’s like a movie series you really like. But in the next season the producers decide that they will change the setting from steampunk to futuristic. In most times,…

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Sylvia Plath Research Paper

    • 4554 Words
    • 19 Pages

    Plath 's poetry is full of symbols and allusions cryptic to those unfamiliar with her biography, so it is necessary to begin any analysis of her work with a brief account of her life. Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 near Boston and for much of her childhood lived near the sea, which finds its way into many of her poetic images (Barnard 14). Her father, Otto Emil Plath, was an immigrant from Germany and her mother, Aurelia Schober, a second generation Austrian American (Barnard 13). Allusions to her German heritage and to World War Two era Europe abound in her work.…

    • 4554 Words
    • 19 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fulbright Scholars

    • 669 Words
    • 3 Pages

    I am going to present ‘Fulbright Scholars’, the first poem from Ted Hughes’ powerful autobiographic ‘Birthday Letters’, which were released in 1998- 35 years after Sylvia Plath suicide and only months before the poet’s death. Hughes’ poems can be regarded as a personal reply to the critics, who have been arguing for decades that his infidelity and cruelty drove Plath to suicide.…

    • 669 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Sylvia had no trouble writing this book due to her experiences with suicidal depression. Sylvia was first diagnosed with depression at the age of 20. This depression set in due to the fact she did not get into a writing class at Harvard and was overworking herself. She then proceeded to cut herself on her thighs in an attempt to commit suicide. She was later referred to a physiatrist and they decided to start her on ETM, electroconvulsive therapy. Although that did not take to her depression. So, Plath set out on a new method, swallowing sleeping pills. Upon doing so she went into a coma for two days and was found under her porch by her family after making noises. These events described were actually in the book due to Plath writing her thoughts into her work. Plath knew depression better than anything and though it was good too write her thoughts out. In doing so it helped her cope with her depression better. Yet Sylvia was also sad as a child because her father was not there and her mixed feelings for her mother. Plath later took one final attempt by putting her head in the oven. She was found dead with her head in the oven and the gas turned…

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Sylvia Plath

    • 1525 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Sylvia Plath poetry is unique because of her use of language and the perspective and themes she explores, creating powerful images and original metaphorical ideas to evoke a strong climax of feelings which express the struggles she experienced in her own personal life. Her poems ‘Lady Lazarus’ and ‘Daddy’ are confessional poems that use contemporary form and respectively a childlike and mocking tone to convey the persona’s mixed sense of emotions . Plath’s poetry utilises unique language to express her anger, hope, desire and disappointment. There is a constant suicidal motif in her poems revealing her personal issues and problems which are linked to male domination in the patriarchal society she resided in. It is unusual that Plath’s poetry is written in a strong female perspective contrary to the passive domesticity which women were meant to abide by in her 1950’s and 1960’s context.…

    • 1525 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hsc Paper

    • 792 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Ted Hughes’ ‘Birthday Letters’ is an anthology of poems which cover his personal view of his relationship with his first wife Sylvia Plath, a well-known poet, who’s most influential works were released in ‘Ariel’ and ‘the Bell jar’.( posthumously after her 1963 suicide) .The poems of Birthday Letters explore contradictory perspectives two of Hughes’ poems ‘The Shot’ and ‘The Minotaur’ which are significant as they delve deeply into his perspective of Plath, their relationship and private moments between the two. The 2003 film ‘Sylvia’, directed by Christine Jeff’s and is based on Plath’s own perspective. The use of slow rhythmic music (non-digetic sound) and a voice over presentive of Plath which positions , teamed with Sylvia’s hidden insecurities. Which are revealed in depth and persuade the audience to empathise with her thus contrasting with Hughes view.…

    • 792 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of the famous figure of 20th century British poetry, Ted Hughes was born in Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire in 1930. After serving as in the Royal Air Force, Hughes attended Cambridge, where he studied archeology and anthropology, taking a special interest in myths and legends. In 1956 he met and married the American poet Sylvia Plath, who encouraged him to submit his manuscript to a first book contest run by The Poetry Center.…

    • 822 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays