Motifs

Question 1

Seascapes

Answer 1

• Plath conjures up images of seascapes and water to evoke an eery sense of calmness in relation to the theme of loneliness that appears throughout her work.
• This is exhibited in Suicide Off Egg Rock, Tulips, Morning Song, Mirror, The Colossus, Full Fathom Five, and Daddy, which all explore the struggle to draw the line between inner-solitude and isolation, as expressed by the desire of the persona to be drowned in the “blue wastage” of the water in Egg Rock.

Question 2

Color imagery

Answer 2

• Plath uses bold color-contrast imagery to depict her emotional turmoil, which brings her to see the world in absolutes.
• Everything is clear-cut: her relationship with her father, whom she hatefully colors black in Daddy; her family, whom she associates with the violent suffocation of the color red in Tulips, juxtaposed with the clarity of winter.

Question 3

Holocaust imagery

Answer 3

• Holocaust imagery is employed throughout Plath’s works that relate to her father, viewing herself as a victim akin to the Jewish victims and her father as the evil entity orchestrating her suffering, like Hitler.
• This victimization expresses her struggle to define her identity as a female in an oppressive patriarchal world, which is amplified by her destructive relationship with her late father.
• This imagery is particularly compelling in the poems Daddy, in which her father is conflated with Hitler, the “Panzer-man”, and Lady Lazarus, where the male collective becomes “Herr Enemy”.

Question 4

Body-related imagery

Answer 4

• A semantic field of the body is common throughout Plath’s work, with different body parts relating to different ideas.
• The foot that appears in Daddy and Lazy Lazarus alludes to her father’s “grey toe”, which has been imprinted onto her memory of him – expressing how she feels smothered by his heavy presence in her mind, which is “as big as a frisco seal”.
• Additionally, Plath refers to the heart, skin, and flesh in Suicide Off Egg Rock, Heavy Women, and Lazy Lazarus relating back to her feeling of alienation within her own body, which feels more like an impediment to her freedom than a vehicle for it.