This study will examine several poems by Sylvia Plath in order to discover what those poems show about the subjects Plath depicts through the poem's images.
As Ellmann and O'Clair write, Plath is a member of that "tradition in our culture [which believes] that the writing of poetry is a dangerous vocation, that great wits are, in fact, to madness near allied, and that poets sometimes court emotional disaster, discovering within themselves areas of pain, confusion, and heartbreak which they transform into works of art, occasions for their readers for fear, trembling, and compassion" (1416).
These are the subjects of Plath's poems - madness (or an emotional awareness and intensity similar to madness), suicide, death, and pain. Indeed, her image-ridden poetry tries to transform these emotions and subjects into works of art.
In the first poem, "Lady Lazarus," Plath presents to us her rage at the reaction of others to her failed suicide attempts. In fact, her poems may be indeed about rage more than anything else, but that rage is expressed with such cleverness, such apparent objectivity, such control and discipline in terms of her writing and narrative, that we have the feeling almost that she is writing about somebody else, about an idea of suicide and return rather than about her own life.
The poem portrays her as both victim and perpetrator, but she seems to be emphasizing the victim aspect of the equation. She portrays herself as a Jew in the hands of Nazis, as if others were responsible for her suicide attempts. She clearly concentrates on what she sees as the false or inappropriate sympathy of others when she returns from her suicide attempts. The poem is a warning to others that they do not understand, do not understand what drives her to suicide, and do not understand, perhaps, that there is a strength in her suicidal nature which is a tremendous threat to them if they could only see: "Herr God, Herr Lucifer,/...