Module C: Plath Flashcards
Horse riding
Second person possessive
Characterisation and metaphor
“Your horse, the white calm stallion”
Julia Gillard
Accusatory tone
Shift blame to Plath
With stirrups
Symbolism
“Lost your stirrups”
Monkey
Image of helplessness - contrast to the restof the poem
“Baby monkey/ using your arm and legs for clinging steel”
Clinging
Harsh imagery
“clinging steel”
Feet
Shift of tone, metaphor
“Flung yourself off and under my feet to trip me”
Charles Manson
Hyperbolic juxtaposition
“Ted Hughes: a talented murderer”
Reading
Guardian newspaper
More trusted than Sam
Bears
Animalistic and bestial imagery
“Hughes doesn’t speak he growls”
Assad yawsar
Metaphor
“An apologetic diatribe concealed in honey”
Pointing
Appropriation of a cliche
“Point a finger or two, or eight, at Hughes”
Nothing
-
Daddy
Metaphor
Your daddy had been aiming you at god
Shooting
Enjambment
Ricocheted / the length of your alpha career
Bullets
Metaphorical accumulation and sibilance
Gold jacketed, solid silver / nickel tipped
A witch
“The right witch doctor tossed you, cooling, one hand to the other”
Pacing
Frantic paced
…undeflected… Trajectory perfect
Bullets
Extended metaphor
I had been hit
Mum
Letters home
October 12, 1962
Traveling
Accumulation of sensory images - Ireland
“Emerald sea washing in fingers among green fields … Peat fires that smell like spiced bread
Holes
Entrapment and metaphor
When free to write myself out of this hole
Casper
“Tear up my last letter … I have had an incredible change of spirit”
Writing
Simile
Writing like mad
Milk
Metaphor
Recover the milk
