Sylvia Plath
EXPOSED
By Lizzy Taistra, Kayla Ellmann, and Cassie
Derrick
Background
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Born in 1932 in Massachusetts
Published first poem at age 8
Always a star student
Scholarship to Smith College
Suffered from Bipolar Disorder
Attempted suicide
Married to Ted Hughes in 1956
Two children-Frieda and
Nicholas
• Successful Suicide in 1963;
age 30
Sylvia and her two children Frieda
and Nicholas
Similarities Between Life and
Poetry
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Ted and Sylvia on their
honeymoon
Father’s death- “Daddy”
Parents’ backgrounds (German
and Austrian decent
Attempted suicide in college
Dad was an expert on bees- “The
Bee Keepers Daughter”
Attempted suicide- book The Bell
Jar
Miscarriage- “Childless Woman”
Struggled Marriage
Ariel- inspired by her horse Ariel
and her love for the sea
Struggled financially and sick
children
1962-Towards the end of her life
she wrote her best and most
emotional and recognized poetry
Plath's Patterns
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-Inconsistent end rhyming
- Analyzes different situations in life by viewpoints of different people, sometimes even by material
objects/ideas (personification)
(ex: "Mushrooms": "our toes, our noses take hold on the loam acquire the air")
-Situations in each poem are over a long period of time (ex: Mirror) and the viewpoint changes throughout
-Uses a lot of colors to describe feelings and certain situations. She changes them as the feelings begin
to change.
-Also uses color to set the mood (ex: black for darkness)
-Often uses dark or even harsh descriptions of heavy feelings
-has an obsession with death
-Her poetry is like looking into a magnified glass; she sees every detail as it is and examines it closely and
carefully
("Tulips":" the tulips are too red", "Mushrooms": she examines mushrooms which someone would
normally never look at because they are such simple creatures; which she gives such powerful and
outspoken personalities)
-Picks objects that no one would think of (RANDOM OBJECTS) and describes them as if they were
common (?). (Random objects and beings that we don't notice often.)
-Seems to go off on tangents. (Off task)
Themes and Motifs
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Love
Hate
Death, Hospitals
Family
Surroundings
Marriage
Literary Criticism
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Dark and negative
Tangents
Confessional
Limitless
Impressive imagery
Language
“Dying is an art, like everything
else. 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
Literary Criticism
• Eleanor Ross Taylor: “Self-consciously womanly, yet
there is a curious underlying rejection of being a
woman.”
• Thomas Blackburn: “Her imagery tends to get out of
hand…” “ becomes not a single experience but a series
of intriguing ‘literary gems’.”
• Robert Lowell: “Language never dies in her mouth.”
• William F. Claire: “Glorious, mostly sick, unbelievably
irritating.”
Reflection of Criticism
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After reading many of her poems we
agree with what the critics have said
much of her writing is dark and
depressing, but after learning about her
life we can understand why they think
that. We strongly agree with William F.
Clare’s vision on how," A rare random
descent was to strike Sylvia Plath
often in poems that were fastidious in
their choice of words, perceptive in
their handling of metaphor and simile.
The wonder of it all was her ability to
keep imagery working for the poem
and not against it. Her poems resist
line extractions, build steadily, word
by word, image by image."
Reflection
• Although many may have
thought of Sylvia Plath to
be insane she was just
simply misunderstood.
For Plath, writing was an
outlet to express her
deepest emotions.
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“And by the way, everything in life is
writable about if you have the outgoing
guts to do it, and the imagination to
improvise. The worst enemy to creativity
is self-doubt.” – Sylvia Plath