The Life and Death of Sylvia Plath

Paper Summary:

Sylvia Plath's life was tainted with repeated tragedies that influenced her work. The paper delves into important biographical details of her life, including the death of her father, her fear of failure, her first suicide attempt, electroshock therapy, her successes and failures as a poet and short-story writer, her marriage, miscarriage, split from her husband, death, and her rise to fame afterwards. The paper then specifically looks at two of her poems, the "Edge" and "Daddy", and how the violent images and death work within.

From the Paper:

"For thirty years, Sylvia had lived in the shadow of her father's death. It affected her profoundly, but she becomes ready to move on. The shoe, which is often seen as an extension of the Nazi metaphor, alludes to the repression of grief for her father and denial of the hatred she has for him. She never truly mourned his death and the shoe becomes suffocating. The poet has hidden away in this shoe; this cage of suppressed emotion. "Barely daring to breathe or Achoo" may refer to her childhood when the upstairs-downstairs system was being used because Plath's mother was afraid that the children's noise would cause him pain. It may also refer to her fear of her father."

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