Contusion by Sylvia Plath

Question 1

Context

Answer 1

• Written 1963, London.

- In the flat in Fitzroy Avenue weeks before Plath’s suicide.

Question 2

Form and Structure

Answer 2

• Tercets and terza rima structure produces a bleak, fatalistic effect.
• The brevity of the poem is most striking as if there is little left to say.

Question 3

Language Techniques

Answer 3

Imagery

• elemental imagery.
• Blood imagery/ water imagery/ stone imagery/ the sea all familiar images in Plath’s work.

Extended metaphor:

• of bruising/ wounding, “contusion”.
• 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 scars of depression and suicidal thoughts.