Sylvia Plath

On October 27, 1932, Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Otto and Auriela Plath. Her father worked for Boston University as a German instructor and a biology professor (Steinberg 13). The family understood the importance of education and so they learned English quickly. Otto published his first monograph Bumblebees and Their ways when Sylvia was two and Aureila 's college thesis "is not for the weary" (Steinberg 14). Needless to say, writing was in her blood. Her first stories included characters such as faries and magical creatures coming right to her front door (Steinberg 14). This could be because her parents read many stories to her, paving the way to an eager imagination. The family moved away from the ocean and into the…

A world full of pain and suffering, and female poet, novelist, and motive Sylvia Plath came to be one of today’s most powerful writers. She is very associated with confessional poetry, which is a style of writing in which authors focus on themselves and detailed issues in their personal lives; she gets as personal as talking about her suicidal thoughts and wishes for death– even upon others! Writers Anne Sexton, Emily Dickinson, and Emily Brontë influenced Plath to pursue a life of writing even…

Sylvia Plath has caused me to take a different path in not only my understanding of poetry, but the appreciation of it as well. This is the story of Sylvia Plath; a gruesome yet great story. There are many great things about Plath’s contemporary work. From her life to her death she was an inspiration to us all. Sylvia Plath’s Poetry reflects on her battles of despair with her personal struggles as an artist and as a woman in the modern century. Focusing on Plath’s major events of her life, it…

the end” (Plath 105). Sylvia Plath was a very talented writer who, even at a young age, wrote poems involving the sorrows of people’s lives. She based many of her writings on people and events from her own life. As seen in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and her other works, Plath uses people, such as her father, and events, like her mental breakdown, that occurred in her life during the mid 1900s to create her own confessional style of writing that focuses heavily on death and depression. Knowing…

Matthew Goldberg ENGL 280 The Journey To Life And Death Sylvia Plath’s “BlackBerrying,” uses imagery and personification to bring the reader into the life of the speaker. Plath committed suicide at age 30, with these poems to show how much life you can live in a short period of time. In this three stanza poem Plath uses seven different colors which allows each reader to create their own image in their head. The poem is straight forward, meaning it is read consecutively. This also illustrates an…

A Brief Biography on Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath was one of the few twentieth century poets that had the ability to create verisimilitude in a way that her audience could understand exactly what she was feeling, thinking, and experiencing during the time she was writing her works. Due to the fact that her writing tended to be dark and depressing, focusing mainly on death, alienation, and self-destruction it can be assumed that Plath had a very negative attitude and perspective towards life, which…

Sylvia Plath was a well-known American poet. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she grew up to be a straight-A student in school and published her first poem at the age of eight. Sylvia was a very bright student growing up and she was very popular. “I think I would like to call myself ‘the girl who wanted to be God’” (Barnard 15). Sylvia set such high goals for herself because she wanted to accomplish the “impossible” (Barnard 15). Although Sylvia seemed like the perfect poster child, she had many…

Sylvia Plath seemed to have the ideal life on the surface but underneath was another side, tamed but on the verge of breaking out. Sylvia Plath started writing at age 11 in her journal and soon after pieces of her work began to be published. Even though she started writing at a young age, her best poetic works did not emerge until she and her husband, Ted Hughes, were separated. At this time of Hughes and Plath’s separation, Plath was living alone with her two children through one of England’s…

Sylvia Plath utilizes personification and simile to illustrate women’s struggles with accepting the ‘flaws’ that come with aging. Through the usage of personification, Sylvia Plath describes the harsh truthfulness of a mirror. The mirror says, I have no preconceptions. What ever you see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful (Sylvia Plath 1-2). The mirror doesn’t alter the appearance in its reflection; it has no bias.…

Sylvia Plath can very easily be considered one of the brightest minds in all of confessional poetry. She wrote hundreds of poems in her lifetime and three books: “The Colossus”, “Ariel”, and “The Bell Jar”. Despite all of her brilliance, she was plagued with a sea of mental illnesses. “The Bell Jar” was written to chronicle the events that occurred before and after her first suicide attempt. Her most famous poem, “Daddy”, mentions how she tried to join her father in death. There is even a…