Lady Lazarus (title a reference to biblical Lazarus, who was raised from the dead by
Jesus after four days dead)
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it---Alliteration
adds to the
idea of her
face being
“featureless”
and uniform –
also “f”
sound quite
an aggressive
one
Reference to childhood neardeath experience and her
suicide attempt
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?----
Internal rhyme
highlights the fact
that “grave” has a
dual meaning here
– cave is “grave”
but also intended
to be her “grave”
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
LL one of her "Holocaust poems", along
with "Daddy" - she develops a German
image to denote Nazism and in turn,
oppression
Calling herself a “Jew” establishes her
as a victim
“Lampshade”, “napkin”, “linen” create the idea
of thinness and frailty, “lampshade” especially
creates the sense that Plath is stretched by her
oppressors – this thin imagery reflected in the
structure of the poem, which itself is extremely
narrow and perhaps itself suggests fragility
These stanzas details her
resurrection as she goes from
having eaten “flesh” to flesh that
is “at home” on her.
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
Continues fragile imagery and suggests that Plath is
irreparably broken with the fact that there are “a
million” filaments – “filament” also associated with
cameras and the prying public eye
Suggests that Plath is made a spectacle
Suggests that Plath is uncovered by her failed
suicide attempts and left vulnerable – in
conjunction with the idea of it being a “strip
tease” this creates the sense that she is examined
and used in a perhaps derogatory manner
I may be skin and bone,
Here Plath gives the “peanutcrunching” crowd what they want in
a sense as she tells them of her
suicide attempts and lays herself
bare
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
Solidity, impenatrability
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
“Dying”
isolated
Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.
Sarcasm
Reality associated
with “hell”
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical
The
trivialising
and abuse of
her suffering
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
Repetition
throughout
(similar to
“some, some”
earlier)
creates an
almost
maniacal
image of
Plath in the
reader’s head,
indicative of
her mental
state
The image of her rescuers taking pearls from
her continues the idea that she is being
exploited by the “peanut-crunching” crowd
Oppressive “peanut-crunching” crowd all
lumped into one evil “brute” – repetition of
“the same” emphasises their unity
Reference to the draining electroshock
treatment she underwent after her first
suicide attempt
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart---It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
Plays on both the ideas that her pain is exploited
and that she is left scarred by this herself (she is
“charged” emotionally). Repetition of “there is a
charge” makes this more evident
A reference to her being put on trial by the
public but also the fact that she is left drained
by letting the world “hear” her “heart” and
exposing herself the way she does in her poems
Internal rhyme
highlights the
word “urn” –
brings to mind
death and fact
that Plath is
“dying” slowly
at the hands of
an oppressive,
intrusive world
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
Ties in with idea of her being a
“pearl” that is extracted, while “baby”
also carries further the fragility and
vulnerability of Plath
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
More sarcasm
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
More repetition and carries
Ash, ash --forward “urn” image
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there---A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
Rids herself of material
associations – the “poking” and
“stirring” no longer affects her as
she is no longer associated with
what they “poke” and “stir”
Makes enemies of God and the Devil –
repetition of “beware” very threatening
and aggressive
“air” suggests an ironic dependence despite the
defiance of the last stanza
Lady Lazarus is Plath getting angry at the world (men in particular) – she admits her
illness but claims that the world has drained her and partially made her the way she is
Widow
Widow. The word consumes itself --Body, a sheet of newsprint on the fire
Levitating a numb minute in the updraft
Over the scalding, red topography
That will put her heart out like an only eye.
Widow. The dead syllable, with its shadow
Of an echo, exposes the panel in the wall
Behind which the secret passages lies--stale air,
Fusty remembrances, the coiled-spring stair
That opens at the top onto nothing at all....
Widow. The bitter spider sits
And sits in the center of her loveless spokes.
Death is the dress she wears, her hat and collar.
The moth-face of her husband, moonwhite and ill,
Circles her like a prey she'd love to kill
A second time, to have him near again ---
A paper image to lay against her heart
The way she laid his letters, till they grew warm
And seemed to give her warmth, like a live skin.
But it is she who is paper now, warmed by no one.
Widow: that great, vacant estate!
The voice of God is full of draftiness,
Promising simply the hard stars, the space Of immortal blankness between stars
And no bodies, singing like arrows up to heaven.
Widow, the compassionate trees bend in,
The trees of loneliness, the trees of mourning.
They stand like shadows about the green landscape --Or even like black holes cut out of it.
A widow resembles them, a shadow-thing,
Hand folding hand, and nothing in between.
A bodiless soul could pass another soul
In this clear air and never notice it --One soul pass through the other, frail as smoke
And utterly ignorant of the way it took.
That is the fear she has--the fear
His soul may beat and be beating at her dull sense
Like Blue Mary's angel, dovelike against a pane
Blinded to all but the grey, spiritless room
It looks in on, and must go on looking in on
Lack of colour represents death.
Plath reflected her feelings of isolation and feelings of neglect by Ted
Hughes.
Daddy
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time-Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of *you*,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two--The vampire who said he was you
anddrank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat, black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always *knew* it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
Interpretations
 Daddy portrays Plath’s deep attachment to the memory of her Father, so much so that
she’s willing to take her life to see him again.
 The poem is also a homage of sorts to her Jewish ancestry.
 Also seen as an outlet where Plath has channeled her rage and oppressive feelings
from her adulterer husband and dominating Father, who has caused so much
unhappiness in her life.
o Symbolizes her relationship with her Father as a Jew to a Nazi - oppressor
and oppressed
Themes
 Nazi / Jewish theme
 Symbols sharply representing the relationship between her father and herself –
emphasizing an alienated / harsh / detached connection they shared
 Embodying a Jew and symbolizing her father as a Nazi– she immediately creates
immense and controlling characteristics associated to him.
 Lots of reference to body parts, such as foot, toe, tongue and jaw. May be reference to
Nazi torture or her dad’s amputation.
Structure
 16 stanzas, 5 lines each
 Opening lines of the first stanza are a rhyming couplet, ending lines of the last stanza
are a rhyming couplet.
Images of Father
 “Bag full of God” – Makes it seem as though her father is Godlike and looks to him
as a role model
 Nazi related images to describe her father
o Drawing physical parallels between Father and Hitler
 “Your neat mustache”
 “And your Aryan eye”
 Portrays father as the Devil in the 11th and 12th stanza
Imagery
 Strong images to convey oppression / hatred for Father and Husband

Title – relates to selfinfliction and mutilation
Hinge represents links to a
door, as a release for her.
Structure links to image.
Imagery of thanksgiving,
little pilgram links to the
thumb, and turkey wattle
and carpet rolls possible
reference to blood.
Drunk on pain (euphoria),
no ill feelings result from
the cut – control, relief.
Rush of blood, link to civil
war – battle with
depression perhaps.
Link to KKK hat, through
the feeling of the
bandage. References to
figures to death. Kamikaze
links to suicide. Reference
to dolls, presenting layers.
Cut
For Susan O'Neill Roe What a thrill ---
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of a hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.
Suggestion of deliberate
cut, with a sense of
exhilaration. Playful tone,
with no worries.
Detached – paradox of
hinge. Possible reference
to death of distance from
self.
It – blood, doesn’t trouble
her anymore. Image of
spurting blood from her
thumb.
A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus,
I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man --The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Recognition of depression,
and reference to suicide
attempt. Realization of
weirdness. Internal battle
with her conscious.
Mill of silence
How you jump --Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
Self-loathing tone
contradicts the earlier