Aprehensions Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Apprehensions,” details the scariness and darkness of the mind. Through the depressing tone, the use of imagery and color association, the speaker, assumed to be Plath herself, allows the reader to enter her mind and experience her thoughts. At the beginning of the first stanza, Plath presents a calm, peaceful image. The stanza starts with the statement, “There is this white wall, above which the sky creates itself.” This example of color association illustrates that the “white wall” is seen as pure and serene. The sky above this wall is considered to be Heaven. The image of Heaven is also present in the third line of this stanza which is “Angels swim in it, and the stars, in indifference also.” Plath then states that these previously mentioned items “are [her] medium.” She remains sane when thinking about the purity of Heaven, the angels …show more content…
In the second stanza, the wall turns to grey, which represents confusion and haziness. Plath follows this description with the rhetorical question “Is there no way out of the mind?” The reader is now aware of a concrete setting, Plath’s mind, and understands that she wants to escape the depths of her mind, which consists of “sourness.” This shows that there are no positive thoughts within her mind, and also presents a depressing tone. In stanza three, the wall is now red, a color that symbolizes anger. Plath also describes “A red fist, opening and closing, two grey, papery bags.” The “red fist” is a heart, and the two bags are lungs. She is fearful about something, and the reader finds out that she fears “being wheeled off under crosses and rain of pieties.” During Plath’s life, she was given electroshock therapy to treat her depression, and the hospitals that provided this type of treatment was usually sponsored by churches, thus clarifying why she is so afraid of the religious images she recounts in the