Essay Three – Sylvia Plath’s Poetry

INTRODUCTION

Atomic age fiction responds to and resonates with the postmodern audience, forced to navigate societal disarray and political anxiety¹. Confronted with the saturated scepticism of composers, audiences are forced to face doubts about humanity’s direction and purpose to a great extent. Sylvia Plath’s poetry in Ariel (1965), Masahiro Shinoda’s film Pale Flower (1964) and Kathy Acker’s novel Don Quixote, which was a dream (1986)² pronounce historically relevant concerns, provoking audiences to recognise the innate shortcomings of post-war geopolitics.

1. This thesis here not only answers the question but also elaborates further on it to establish the key framework my essay will examine the texts from. The introduction overall is quite short but this was written originally under exam conditions. If I were to revise it, I would have elaborated further but I wanted to provide a sample of what I strove to achieve with an essay written in 40 minutes.

2. This essay will be using Sylvia Plath’s Ariel as the primary text, as well as two related texts of different genres which will help showcase my awareness of form and techniques.

PARAGRAPH 1

With doubts shadowing over personal power, the desperation to ignite a sense of purpose before death can be perceived. A departure from the traditional glorification of death as a powerful act is exchanged with audiences in Words, written ten days before Plath’s suicide³. In desperation, Plath deconstructs language and conveys the inevitability of human tragedy in a poetic, dichotomous purge, attempting to combat the transience of existence with the permanence of words.⁴ The synaesthesia⁵ of “echoes! Echoes travelling” visually and aurally stimulate the purposeful reverberations of language, projected from individual agency. However, a determinist perspective forces doubt of humanity’s purpose with “fixed stars/Govern a life,” pinpointing the eventual end and inability to control humanity’s direction. In the connotation of “govern,” Plath forces audiences to doubt the personal purpose they may appear to have when fate is placed under the control of prevailing figures in the Cold War period. Words “constructs the temporality of her discourse” (Elena Ciobanu, 2008) to portray this inevitable direction towards downfall.⁶ Conversely, Shinoda’s film noir protagonist Muraki searches for purpose in mastering death. In a cruel reversal of his fate, Muraki embraces the “greatest high” that he originally sought to redeem himself from when he chooses to, once again, assassinate. Rather than glorifying the yakuza experience, Shinoda directs audiences to his alienated protagonist’s moral collapse. Baroque composer Henry Purcell’s renowned aria ‘Dido’s Lament’ looms in the background during the assassination, captured with an image of devious dignity. The ominous facial expression worn by Muraki deceives the gradual crescendo that aurally releases the “high” experienced as he commits the crime. This recontextualised aria heightens the scene that is otherwise silent, poignantly highlighting the tragic purpose of Shinoda’s antihero in Pale Flower with non-diegetic sound.⁷ Plath’s view on death is one of fear and concern towards whether any purpose can be derived in a world void of it; Shinoda’s Muraki embraces it for purpose. Regardless, both composers have urged responders to critically doubt the notion of purpose as sustainable in a passing, atomic age existence.⁸

3. This briefly contextualises the poem without diving deep into Plath’s biography. This keeps the analysis geared towards the thematic ideas of the text, rather than being a survey of Plath’s life. You should assume your reader has background knowledge on the poet; your goal is to shed light on their work through close analysis!

4. Authorial intent is speculated here in this sentence. I could be entirely wrong and Plath just wanted to write the poems because she wanted to. However, given the background of Ariel and the subject matter of the poem, it can be inferred and suggested here. I actually used figurative language myself in this sentence by juxtaposing "the transience of existence with the permanence of words." I really want to nail it home that techniques are not only reserved for the poets to use; wherever you find it comfortable to show some personal flair, I would highly encourage doing it!

5. Synaesthesia: a joining or merging of senses. This technique can be great to use as a substitute for “sensory imagery” because it can allow you to explain which senses are particularly interacting later on in your analysis which are visual and aural in this case.

6. Using scholars and critics in your essays can illustrate to your reader that you have done further reading. They can also enhance your arguments and be integrated within your writing to heighten the quality of language. However, it is important to make sure this is done in moderation and to achieve an intended effect. Your essay can still perform well without these quotes because your own quotes and techniques should still be the main source of textual evidence for discussion. In this essay, I restricted myself to one critic per paragraph to show this.

7. Although this analysis is not about poetry, it still is conveyed in a poetic way with the expressions I have used in the writing. I also made sure it was conscious of the prescribed text and this is established from the connective “Conversely”, letting the reader know that the film has an alternative perspective to purpose that I will be exploring.

8. Here, I provided a synthesis of the ideas in both texts to wrap up the paragraph. I firstly compared the differences between the texts in a brief manner before addressing their common portrayal of purpose.

PARAGRAPH 2

Atomic age stagnation permeates even in signs of progression, as with the questioning of gender identity by composers revealing the disintegration of equality.⁹ The feminine power struggle is explored in nuclear fiction to uncover the sexual politics that governed patriarchal societies. Plath’s titular persona Lady Lazarus is a vessel to her identity resurrection as a poet. Although regarded as autobiographical, Plath extends herself in this biblical persona, sounding in the exclamation "’A miracle!’ That knocks me out.” This can be interpreted as a fleeting weight of purpose granted to the female writer.¹⁰ Signalled with the epithet “Herr God, Herr Lucifer,” Plath assigns women as subalterns of a male-dominated literary sphere, doubting feminine empowerment despite her repetitious warnings “Beware / Beware.” Audiences are forced to recognise that attempts to transcend male dominance are ultimately ineffective, stationing doubts and exposing the economic limitations placed on women. Acker’s titular protagonist Don Quixote parodies the heroic male identity and yet also falls victim to the gendered status quo. In aiming to voice on behalf of the female demographic, Acker similarly labels female writers as subalterns. With capitalised text situated in the centre of the second chapter, Acker narrates from a third person perspective “BEING BORN INTO AND PART OF A MALE WORLD, SHE HAD NO SPEECH OF HER OWN.”¹¹ Bold typesetting literally proclaims the isolation women experience as writers and positions readers to doubt progression from Plath’s feminist anguish more than two decades prior to Don Quixote. With gender displacement presented as a result of artistic constraints, Plath and Acker trace doubt for the direction of women in literature, and for women overall, forcing audiences to understand that women had to succumb to authoritative leadership of men in “phantasmagoric fantasising and role-playing.” (Clarissa Lee Ai Ling, 2004). Thus,¹² post-war women find invigoration from a brief allegorical resurrection, or from an opportunity to voice their concerns with futility about humanity’s direction for women, forcing doubts on audiences with what purpose they should live by and the freedom that has otherwise been restricted from them.¹³

9. I took a gendered approach to my analysis here in this paragraph to take a different look at the poet. Although I look at feminism here in this essay, gender encompasses greater areas of discussion such as stereotypes, norms, values and shifting views which definitely are worth considering as well.

10. The persona idea is quite central to this particular poem which would make it worth discussing. I do not go in depth into who Lazarus was or provide further descriptions about the persona’s character but I acknowledge here because it is important to how Plath explores purpose.

11. I quoted the text as it appears in the text and while it looks strange and almost invasive to the eyes, I wanted how I integrated it in my analysis to be read as it was intended by the author. This was something my own English teacher was happy for me to do but if ever in doubt, check with yours about their opinions on it.

12. The synthesis here is more extensive than the one in the previous paragraph but this does not make it any better or worse. It just means I found significant connections between the texts worth diving into and reinforcing.

13. This essay only has two paragraphs but can be divided into four parts. It is ultimately up to you how you wish to divide them so long as it makes sense. In how I organised my ideas, I found that it had two distinct ideas and that it would be appropriate to group them into two larger paragraphs.

CONCLUSION

In essence, doubts are instrumental to the reception of Cold War fiction as a reminder of humanity’s decimation. Purpose and direction have been contended as questionably futile and force audiences to doubt situational inactivity, to understand that this is not a sign of peace. Instead, greater concerns and an importance to realise them necessitates in postmodern representations of the human condition. To this end, readers are made to doubt humanity’s direction and purpose in texts conceived after the bomb to speculate and strive towards future possibilities of progress and hope.¹⁴