Compare the ways in which Philip Larkin and Sylvia Plath explore family relationships.
In Ariel and The Whitsun Weddings Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin often explore family relationships. For Sylvia Plath, the family is an arena of pain, irony and anger. Philip Larkin in contrast, explores the family from a more detached and resigned viewpoint.
Medusa is a poem by Sylvia Plath. The title Medusa is very significant because not many people would dare to link their mother to the image of Medusa because she was a gorgon (a female monster) who is known for turning people into stone from just one look, it is a very personal and unpleasant title. The sea imagery within the poem relates to the title because if Aurelia Plath’s mother is being referred …show more content…
This makes it perceivable that Plath’s narrator does not want to become like her mother, whom she finds not only suffocating but also repressive. The graphology of the poem ‘Medusa’ is interesting. The poem is set out in short, flowing stanzas. Each stanza has been written to represent the stages of the difficult relationship between mother and daughter. The graphology of the poem leads the reader through these stages. For example in stanza one it tells us that the narrator is bound by the mother-daughter …show more content…
In this poem the title ‘Daddy’ has a dual meaning which is Plath also referring to her husband Ted Hughes. This poem has five stanzas which are all brutal and venomous lines about Plath’s ‘Daddy’. The speaker uses imagery to build a metaphor to link her father to being a Nazi; the neat mustache is an allusion and a subtle reference to Hitler 's own mustache, the bright blue Aryan eyes refer to the Nazi 's ideal race of people that was created. This imagery tells us that Plath is angry with her father and is comparing him to someone as horrific as a Nazi. Then Plath goes on to switch him from the metaphor
In Ariel and The Whitsun Weddings Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin often explore family relationships. For Sylvia Plath, the family is an arena of pain, irony and anger. Philip Larkin in contrast, explores the family from a more detached and resigned viewpoint.
Medusa is a poem by Sylvia Plath. The title Medusa is very significant because not many people would dare to link their mother to the image of Medusa because she was a gorgon (a female monster) who is known for turning people into stone from just one look, it is a very personal and unpleasant title. The sea imagery within the poem relates to the title because if Aurelia Plath’s mother is being referred …show more content…
This makes it perceivable that Plath’s narrator does not want to become like her mother, whom she finds not only suffocating but also repressive. The graphology of the poem ‘Medusa’ is interesting. The poem is set out in short, flowing stanzas. Each stanza has been written to represent the stages of the difficult relationship between mother and daughter. The graphology of the poem leads the reader through these stages. For example in stanza one it tells us that the narrator is bound by the mother-daughter …show more content…
In this poem the title ‘Daddy’ has a dual meaning which is Plath also referring to her husband Ted Hughes. This poem has five stanzas which are all brutal and venomous lines about Plath’s ‘Daddy’. The speaker uses imagery to build a metaphor to link her father to being a Nazi; the neat mustache is an allusion and a subtle reference to Hitler 's own mustache, the bright blue Aryan eyes refer to the Nazi 's ideal race of people that was created. This imagery tells us that Plath is angry with her father and is comparing him to someone as horrific as a Nazi. Then Plath goes on to switch him from the metaphor