Adamou

Abdel Nasser

Assignment 2

Subject: Introduction to literature

Lecture: Maria Christoforou

Date: 20 December 2011

Introduction: The poem, i am going to analyze is Lazy Lazarus written by Sylvia Plath in 1962. At first, her poem dont seem easy to understand, we can feel her anguish and we can imagine how frustrate she felt with her life. The poem, talk about her experiences and her suicide attempts which are a reflection of her pained life. Sylvia is one of the most famous contemporary poets, her tragic life, she tried several time to kill herself, but she failed. Her mental illness got worst when her married with Ted Hughes broke apart, she became depressed and she killed herself in 1963 at the age of 30th. Lady Lazarus talks about her failure on committing suicide and how she felt about people who tried to save her.

1.

Line 11 o my enemy, do I terrify?

According to Sylvia Plath the enemies are her father, her husband, Nazi persecution, Doctor, God and Lucifer. Doctor: So, so Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy.She addresses to the Doctor in German instead of in English, so it is clear the relation she does between Nazis and him. The Doctor has the same behavior the Nazis had. But not only the Doctor was her enemy, she thought that God and Lucifer were her oppressors too. Herr God, Herr Lucifer, Beware, she thought that God is her enemy because he stops her to kill herself. With anger and grandiosity, she warns the great powers. Her father was a Nazi persecution, then after her father died and she felt abandoned. And her husband too was a Nazi. Her enemy was male "I eat men like air," she declares that she has defeated all her enemies, all the men in her life: the doctors who kept reviving her, and perhaps her father. And it show that her enemy was only men, at time the Nazi were only men, killing the Jews, and the female were totally control by the men, so lady Lazarus can be also a revenge.

2.

Three allusions references and analyze them.

Cat: And like the cat I have nine times to die She hadnt succeeded with her latest suicide attempts and she identifies herself as a cat which can save his life because it has 9 lives. In other words the cats dont die easily.

Lazarus: Lady Lazarus has a Biblical relation with the story of Lazarus, who was a man resurrected by Jesus in the New Testament. In this poem, Lazarus it is shown as a lady, and this lady is an identification with the poet herself who felt "saved" too because all of her attempts to suicide failed.

The phoenix: a mythical bird; a fire spirit with a colorful plumage. It has a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that it ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn a new to live again.

3. The tone of the poem towards death. The theme of this poem is about death, so for Plat, she considered dead as a liberating, something that make her happy rather than to be alive. In other words life is her hell, and hell is her life. I have done it again. One year in every ten this means that she has attempted to suicide before, and this could be probably the second time, and she showed that she doesnt want to be alive. People who return from the edge of death often speak of it as rebirth. Lady Lazarus effectively conveys that feeling. It is principally, however, about the aspiration to revenge that is felt by the female victim of male domination, conceived as ubiquitous. The revenge would be against all men. The poem depicts the onset of successful revenge is problematic. Lady Lazarus has surely arrived at the point of reversing roles with her antagonist. She understands and intends to exploit his means of violent mastery, and at the last, the prefatory myth of the halting Lazarus is altered to the myth of the ascendant phoenix, the bird which immolates itself every five hundred years but rises whole and rejuvenated from its ashes. Lady Lazaruss

red hair suggests fire, which lives off oxygen. I eat men like air, therefore, seems the foreshadowing of victory, in the restoration of the true self and the annihilation of its detractors. 4. Metaphors and similes used in the poem. y Simile: Bright as a Nazi lampshade here she compares herself to a persecuted Jew. y y Metaphor: my right foots a paperweight, my face a featureless: Simile: And like the cat I have nine times to die, she compares herself as a cat, that doesnt die easily. y Metaphor: A sort of walking miracle for the times when Plath was resurrected from the dead, she refers to herself as "A sort of walking miracle," which reflects the meaning of the title; Lady Lazarus is miraculously raised from the dead y y Simile: I eat men like air she meant to challenge her enemies Metaphor: "million filaments" these could be a physical representation of her guilt, its invading quality.

5.

Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me y She considered the grave like her home, Soon, soon the flesh/ the grave cave ate will be/ At home on me. This set of lines evokes the picture of a dead body, lain in the middle of a cave, rotting. And yet to this image, the narrator smiles and is happy. This initially seems to be Plaths method of speaking of death and her happiness at its occurrence. That said, in the passage in the Bible that speaks of Lazarus, he is in the grave cave, his flesh rotting, when he is brought back to life. Thus this could change from a passage about death to that of life Dying Is an art, like everything else, I do it exceptionally well. y In the this stanza Plath considers dying like an exploit of sorts, and brags about the fact that she is talented in doing so as in anything else: "Dying is an art, like

everything else,

do it exceptionally well." This is where we are shown her

perfectionist and masochistic selves surfacing and intertwining as she makes sure that she is real about it.

CONCLUSION It was so difficult for me to understand the poem at first because I knew it talked about her suicidal experiences, but I think nobody can imagine why people commit suicide. It is hard to understand why a young woman wants to disappear and torture herself in that way. I tried to feel like her for a moment, thinking as if I was feeling that desperation and after that, I could understand what she wanted to express. She felt dominated by everyone, without freedom to decide over her life, she was obliged to stay and nobody asked her what she wanted. This poem is a testimony of her resentment of those who oppressed her and of her incapability to continue with her life.