Analysis Of Sylvia Plath And William Wordsworth

“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity”. This quote, by acclaimed British poet, William Wordsworth, encapsulates the meaning and purpose of poetry in his mind. His opinion on poetry differs greatly from fellow poet T.S Eliot. He states that “poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.” But what does this mean and why would Eliot think this? Well he believed that poetry was a means to improve and preserve language rather than express sentiments and that …show more content…
Plath shows her personality through her poem ‘Daddy’. She, in this poem, shows her troublesome life and dark and depressed personality. After the death of her father and a lifetime of mental health problems, Plath attempted suicide shown through the line ‘At twenty I tried to die, and get back, back, back to you’. This line alone shows her troubled personality due to the hardships she faced during her life. Her views on both her father and husband show her personality, not wanting to be overpowered by the male figures in her life. She says that ‘If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two’, referring to these people, and wanted these men out of her life and mind. Plath was also an extremely intellectual woman, which is shown through ‘Daddy’. She herself states that “[she] is a victim of introspection”, meaning that she was constantly thinking about her feeling and thoughts, perhaps a major reason to her eventual demise. Similarly, Dylan Thomas was described as “suffering from a character neurosis, with increasing depression, dangerous alcoholic acting out, tormenting worry, progressive creative inhibition, indicating a sense of neurotic helplessness” (Murphy, D.W). These aspects of Thomas’ personality were shown in his poem ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’. He, like Plath, thought deeply about his feelings, and also lived a reasonably short life. In his poem, he uses the repetition of the phrase ‘rage, rage against the dying of the light’ to show his opinions on death, and his intellectually driven nature. He also uses oxymoron when he states ‘curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears’, which somewhat shows his disordered nature. Through both ‘Daddy’ and ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’, the personalities of both Plath and Thomas can be clearly seen, both troubled souls plagued by mental illness , therefore disagreeing with Eliot’s opinion