Sylvia Plath: The unfinished life

My first contact with Sylvia Plath’s poetry was during the course of North-American literature III. In spite of the recent contact with her production, I am very interested in her poetry and would like to understand a little more about her and her work.
So, the aim of this research paper is to analyze and to try to understand Sylvia Plath’s life and poetry.
In my opinion, there is not poetry without life. - The poet must be living or dying to write poetry, however the poet must be alive to write. So, I consider that poetry is closely associated with the author’s life. In the moment of creation, the author is accompanied by herself, her own nature, and her experiences with others and the environment.
It is not the purpose of this research paper to judge the author’s life or put labels on her poetry. However I will consider the author’s life as an indivisible part of her poetry. Even being aware that sometimes it is very difficult to analyze something without judging or putting adjectives, I will try to develop this theme anyway.

"I think I would like to call myself 'the girl who wanted to be God'. Yet if I were not in this body, where would I be--perhaps I am destined to be classified and qualified. But, oh, I cry out against it." – Sylvia Plath

Basically, Silvia Plath produced a large number of poems. She published her first poem when she was eight years old, and she continued producing poems until last year when she died. The last three years of her life are considered the best in terms of her textual production. In this period, her poetry presents elements about her life. As many authors that have produced this style of poetry, Sylvia Plath is considered a confessionist. Through her poetry, she confesses her feelings and describes herself.
A recurrent theme in her poetry is her family. The first poem that I decided to analyze is about this theme. For a fatherless son is a poem written by Sylvia Plath in August, 1962, and published in the same year. Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes, had a marital discord that was moving toward the Plath-Hughes decision to separate before the period that she wrote this poem.

For a Fatherless Son

You will be aware of an absence, presently,
Growing beside you, like a tree,
A death tree, color gone, an Australian gum tree ---
Balding, gelded by lightning--an illusion,
And a sky like a pig's backside, an utter lack of attention.
But right now you are dumb.
And I love your stupidity,
The blind mirror of it. I look in
And find no face but my own, and you think that's funny.
It is good for me
To have you grab my nose, a ladder rung.
One day you may touch what's wrong ---
The small skulls, the smashed blue hills, the godawful hush.
Till then your smiles are found money.


A presence of a father in Sylvia Plath’s poetry can be noticed in many poems produced by her. In this case, the poem starts with this sentence:

You will be aware of an absence, presently,
Growing beside you, like a tree,
A death tree, color gone, an Australian gum tree--


The absence of a father is present here, and she considers that this absence will grow beside the son, as an Australian gum tree. In other words the absence will become huge in some years. She knew about this feeling. In this poem, the absence of the father represents his presence inside Sylvia Plath’s feelings and memories. Sylvia Plath lost her father when she was twelve years old, and this fact brought consequences to her entire life.
The next part of the poem is a mix of love and hate. She loves her son, but at the same time she hates him. She starts describing his birth as an illusion and his conception an utter lack of attention.

Balding, gelded by lightning--an illusion,
And a sky like a pig's backside, an utter lack of attention.
But right now you are dumb.
And I love your stupidity,

She knew that her baby was innocent, but instead of using this word, she preferred to call him dumb. Maybe she thought that babies could be born with a master’s degree.
Every mother changes her life to create another. She also had to change the way of her life when the baby was born. However, she fell into a great depression after that.

The blind mirror of it. I look in
And find no face but my own, and you think that's funny.
It is good for me
To have you grab my nose, a ladder rung.


She recognizes herself in her son’s face and she knows that it is good for her. Why it is good for her? Because she considers it a good thing when a mother recognizes her son instead of rejecting him.


One day you may touch what's wrong ---
The small skulls, the smashed blue hills, the godawful hush.
Till then your smiles are found money.



As a message for the future, she left this poem for her son. Probably, one day he read her poems. I am not sure about what he felt when he read her poems. I would feel rejected by an independent and so regarded mother.
As a mirror of her life, her poems have kept Sylvia Plath alive for us. Her poems and her life have been studied by many students and researchers in many universities and academies. Some people consider Sylvia Plath as a feminist symbol at the 60’s. However, I don’t have enough sources available to make a deeper analysis about her life, and I prefer to stay on the surface of a personal analysis. - She had some problems during her life, however, tears make better poems, and her poetry will keep Sylvia Plath alive in our minds forever.



Marcos M. Ribas
North - American Literature III - UFRGS
Final Paper