Analysis Of The Poem Your Paris

Register to read the introduction… The opening line ‘Your Paris, I thought, was American’ immediately shows that Hughes is assuming Plath’s perspective based on her actions such as ‘wanted to draw les toits’. Plath was very much interested in the tourist side of Paris and was immersing herself so much in the history and the culture that she became oblivious to the destruction it had undergone during World War Two. Hughes, however, had an insight to the devastation as had previously served in the RAF as so is aware of, and on the lookout for, evidence of Paris’ attempt to recover , ‘So recently the coffee was still bitter/ As acorns, and the waiters’ eyes/ Clogged with dregs of betrayal, reprisal, hatred’. He is evidently angered by Plath’s apparent ignorance towards Paris and refers to it as being ‘Diesel aflame to the dog in me’. His anger towards Plath appears in many of the poems in the collection birthday letters through accusation; especially in ‘Sam’ where the bitter tone reciprocates the mood in ‘Your Paris’. This issue of different perspectives is resounding throughout the poem and prompts the further issues to …show more content…
The line ‘With an eerie familiar feeling’ is the most telling of this as (although he could compare his RAF experiences) he also recognises the similarities between Plath, seemingly cheerful and content with a dark past and Post-war, recovering Paris. Hughes compares Plath to the walls, ‘Those walls,/ raggy with posters, were your own flayed skin-/ Stretched on your stone god’ relating to her affixation with her father, Otto. This quote tells us that Hughes feels she has been trying to protect ‘your stone god’ which we known to be the memory of her father whilst suffering herself in the process. Hughes knows that she tried to contain her feelings ‘translated your spasms to what you excused/ As your gushy burblings’ but to no avail as there was nothing that could be done to save her, everything was harmful, ‘One walking wound that the air/ Coming against kept in a fever, wincing to agonies’. The issue of Plath’s metal health is such a huge one as Hughes blames it for most of the problems in their relationship, as seen in the poems ‘Sam’, ‘Being Christlike’ and ‘The tender Place’ where Hughes directly talks about the electrocution treatment Plath was given for her depression. The topic is mentally constantly throughout the collection and is the most prominent issue Hughes finds himself dealing