Contusion Flashcards
1
Q
Who wrote contusion
A
Sylvia Plath
2
Q
When was contusion published and in what collection
A
wrote 1963 a week before suicide, published 1965 in Ariel
3
Q
quick themes of contusion
A
depression
loss
4
Q
Tone of contusion
A
tone of fatalism
5
Q
quick overview of contusion
A
Plath describes a dull purple color rushing to a spot on a washed-out, pale body. The color of the contusion is contrasted with the body’s paleness.
6
Q
structure and form of contusion
A
Tercets and Terza Rima that produces bleak fatalistic effect.
no rhyme scheme
7
Q
context of contusion
A
Written 11 days before her suicide in Fitzray avenue
One critic noted the allusion to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, writing that the first stanza “evokes The Tempest only to emphasize the absence of any sea-change.
8
Q
Quick language techniques
A
- Extended Metaphor: of bruising/ wounding, “contusion”. The bruises left by daddy, mummy, husband and of the tensions between the demands of being a mother/wife according to the conventions of the 1960s and a female writer in the world of men. The injured tissue of a bruise symbolising also the pain/scars of depression and suicidal thoughts.
- Imagery: elemental imagery. Blood imagery/ water imagery/ stone imagery/ the sea all familiar images in Plath’s work
- lack of possessive adjectives
- 4th stanza horror movie like
