Sylvia Plath's poem "Ariel"
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Sylvia Plath's poem "Ariel" is a poem about personal destruction and renewal as the pesonality of the rider fuses with the horse she rides to become something more than either of them alone. The occasion of the poem is a horseback ride at dawn, and the real ride becomes a symbolic ride toward destruction and a new beginning. The ride can be seen as a spiritual journey on the horse Ariel. There is a unity achieved in the description of the way the horse, rider, and path meld together during the ride that makes the entire situation respond to the name "Ariel," not merely the horse. The horse, rider, and landscape are described as "substanceless," and this is one indication of the way they have melded together and combined into one experience:From the first line, the image created is of a moment that begins in isolation and stillness--"Stasis in darkness." The use of the word "stasis" here shows that in the beginning, all is in perfect equilibrium. There is a stillness that will devolve into the action of the horse and rider. The woman becomes one with the horse and tastes of its power as she does so. Here the dawn dissipates the darkness so that the rocky peaks can be seen in the distance. The shift is from black to blue, but all is still substanceless, meaning details cannot be differentiated. The rider is "God's lioness," and she and the horse gro
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," with the eye being like the bullseye sought by the arrow and thus stands as the goal. It is found in the cauldron of morning, the time when things begin and when new possibilities are found once the light has fully dissipated the darkness of stasis.
Flannery O'Connor in her short stories "Good Country People" and "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" shows a concern with the tension between body and mind, the physical and the spiritual. She presents this tension in the context of an almost allegorical structure in both stories. Both stories take place in a world that is cruel, where human beings inflict damage on one another almost as a matter of course. The world O'Connor creates in her stories is one where the conflict between mind and body is often bloody and may border on the grotesque, and in both these stories the plot and theme unfolds in a world with mythological power and significance. The theme of abandonment is also present in both stories and reinforces the idea that the mind actually separates us from the world around us so that no matter what connections we might make with the world around us, ultimately we are alone.
The situations in which the abandonment takes place in both stories is bizarre. In "The L
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1548
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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