Plath and Hughes Flashcards
Crossing the water - Overview
- Explores a Journey ‘across the water’, often is interrupted as an insiders view on death.
- The poem discusses an incarcerating place.
- Key patterns of manichean imagery, light and dark motif.
- Classical allusion to sirens (in greek myth they led sailors to their death) and the river styx.
‘Black lake, black boat, two black, cut paper people’ - manichean imagery, plosives, ‘evil in nature’
‘They are round and flat and full of dark advice’ - personification of the flowers, makes them other worldly’, use of triadic structure
Crossing the water - Context
Some interpret it as a reflection of Plath’s journey across the water from America to England.
‘Plath’s feelings about both America and England were ambivalent’ (T. Brians) - her choice to come to England was a contributing factor in her death/suicide
‘Water was a primal substance in Plath’s life” (Jonathan Bates)
Heptonstall - Overview
- Explores the physical aspects of death, visceral representation of decomposition showcased perhaps most evidently in the structure of the poem
-Cyclicar ideas about the inescapable nature of death
‘Skull’ - anaphora, death is inevitable, bodily noun
‘‘Skull of a sheep whose meats melt’ - alliteration, visceral imagery, true destrcutions, uncomfterble language
“Drained to the sutures of a cracked windowsills” - verb ‘drained’, lifeless, soul sucking, exhaustion, ‘cracked windowsills’ fragility, broken perhaps mentally
Heptonstall - Context
- Heptonstall was the town in Yorkshire where Hughes grew up, and also the graveyard where his wife, Plath, was buried.
-Plaths gravestone translation “even amongst the fierce flame, the golden lotus can be planted”
Tulips - Overview
- Poem centres around a patient in a hospital setting.
- The central conflict is between the patients desire for the simplicity of death vs the tulips encouragement towards life.
- The tulips juxtapose passivity offered by the ward, shown through the use of personification of the flowers
- The tulips can be seen as a symbol for mental space
- Written in free verse, which creates freedom and lack of structure - reflective of the hospital setting
“The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here’ - semantic theme of seasons, spring vs winter, personification of the flowers, disrupting the peace
“I am nobody: I have nothing to do with explosions” - Depersonalisation, aggressive verb ‘explosions’ - outside world is characterised as aggressive, contrasts the passivity of the setting
‘They body is a pebble, they tend to it as water’ - comfort in nature, depersonalisation
Tulips - Context
- Plath wrote the poem about flowers she received in the hospital after having her appendix out
-It is an example of a confessional poem
-Although it is about a routine surgery, Plath struggle with ongoing depression, eventually committing suicide - this poem perhaps reflects on some of her longing for peace with death
-Holland national flower
Thistles - Overview
-Extended metaphor for ongoing strife - cyclical structure ‘their sons’ - perhaps reflective of human suffering
-Within the poem there is a semantic field of violence, represents the hardship of life and suffering
-Power of nature
‘Crackle open under a blue black pressure’ - plosives, aggressive tone, persistence and strength in nature
‘Thistles spike the summer air” - contrast between comfort of summer and aggressive verb ‘spike’ connotes to sharp, violent, pain and suffering
‘Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground’ - cyclical structure of resilience, relentless, growth and development
Thistles - Context
- ## Hughes had an interest with anthropology (the scientistic study of humanity) and history, likening the fearsome and indomitable thistle to the Viking raiders whose bones and conquests remain firmly ingrained in the soil. ‘Decayed Viking”
Finisterre - Overview
Seascape poem, extended metaphor for death. - talks about men who died by drowning in the sea
-Explores themes of loss, isolation and cyclical structure
- Paradoxical poem, appears to contradict itself but actually offers truth - use of seascape language, drowned, shipwrecked emphasis loss and desolation
- Plath is trying to point out the way in which depression has an effect on a person - collective nomenclature of ‘our’ shared experienced.
- Signifys the illusory nature of hope - presented through the ‘Our lady shipwreck’ -people fall in love with allusions and ideas, feels bleak, clear tone of melonchony
Use of ceasura reflects a fractured psyche.
‘Our lady shipwrecked’ - biblical allusion, inclusive pronoun ‘our’ - symbol of hope within the poem, central conflict ‘she does not hear’
‘‘Cramped on nothing. Black/Admonitory cliffs and the sea exploding’ - endless battle, with the violent personification of the sea, oxymoron ‘cramped on nothing’ - nothing-ness is sufficating,
Past tense - already a losing battle
Finisterre - Context
- Finisterre in Latin means ‘end/edge’
- The title refers to a section of coast in Brittany, France where Plath holidayed with Hughes
- Plath struggled with mental health for a long time
Rain - Overview
The poem uses minimum words to communicate the speed and impact of continuous rain. The content is not pleasant but the images used are graphic and vivid. His concern for the animals within the poem speaks significantly about his sensitive nature - purposely avoids the human world by not discussing it
Ending is apocalyptic ‘invisible in the dusk, with their squelching cries’ - onomatepia ‘squelching’, - subversion of the natural order - anguish of the animals
Use of Caesura forces pauses, contrasts to the thematic idea of the poem ‘Rain. Floods. Frost. And after frost, rain’ - vicious cycle, Fricatives
Pathetic fallacy - tactile, kinesthetics
Rain - Context
‘He himself was part of that landscape, elemental and unchangeable’ (Johnathan Bates)
Edmund Burke and the sublime
Empathy for animals
Ariel - Overview
Various interpretations - Journey of an artist, lesbian love affair, against the patriarchy, physical journey
This is an escape form she has been given - liberty - metamorphosis, transgression
Colour imagery throughout the poem
Pattern of enjambement - makes the reader feel out of control as their are not natural pauses
Begins with stillness ‘stasis’
‘Gods lionesses/ how strong we grow’ - female strength/pride, a female power god improves, her connection to the horse, the power and pride she gains from it
‘Godiva I unpeel - dead hands, dead stringencies’ - Volta, classical allusion to Godiva, who rode naked so that her husband wouldn’t raise taxes - example of female rebellion against patriarchy - deconstruction, unreel, connotes to snake skin, metamorphosis, anaphora of ‘dead’.
‘Suicidal at one with the drive into the red’ - colour imagery
Ariel - Context
-Ariel was the name of Plath’s favourite Horse
-Intertextual reference to The Tempest
-Picasso, ‘the first act of creation is destruction’
-Publishes after her death
-‘Plath wrote angrily about living in a patriarchal society’ - Rebecca Warren
The Horses - Overview
Positive view of nature ‘admirable light, fascination
Macabre crow poem
Horses symbolise constant - endurance, stoic energy
Paradoxically, the poem celebrates an active stasis
Colour imagery is used throughout
Auditory imagery towards the end of the poem, ‘Hearing the horizons endure’ - spiritual awakening - suggest a future, limitless
Bleak state of mind, sublime, sombre attitude
