Anguished Psyche is Selected Poems of Sylvia Plath

Abstract

This research looks into the portrayal of Anguished Psyche in Selected Poems of Sylvia Plath. The cause of her psychic disorders will be explored and the responsible factors contributing to her mental depression will also be analyzed through textual analysis based on the writing of psychoanalysis as discussed by Sigmund Freud, and Jacques Lacan. In “Lady Lazarus” poem, Plath comparing her enemy with Nazi who is the male authority figure in the poem. After the death of Jews in Nazi concentration camp; Hitler used their body for commodity. Speaker expresses her anger towards Holocaust patriarchy. In this poem, Plath compares patriarchal brutality as the brutality of Hitler. Again her identity has been commodified like Nazi.“Lady Lazarus” is really about Sylvia’s suicidal attempts and near death experiences. Plath describes the speaker’s oppression with the use of World War II Nazi Germany allusions and images. She develops a German images to denote Nazism and in turn, oppression. Here, references to Nazis and Jews is actually a metaphor also used in “Daddy”, and is really painting a picture for the reader. Like the Jews in the Holocaust, she is a victim, while the doctors and others figures are her oppressors like the Nazis.

Likewise, in the “Ariel” the red eye metaphorically stands for patriarchy against which she protests through suicide. It is the confession of suicide but that suicide is a tool to fight against the patriarchy. Freud believed that aim of life is death, and for Plath life was poetry. So, by extension, poetry for her now becomes death. She is disturbed by cultural differences for male and female. Her deep meditation on the culture leads into trouble. To get relief from trouble she expresses her mental split through poetic lines (art). Her personal and literary career was not running smoothly. This proves that Plath’s mental breakdown does not allow her to see good in things around her. And airy spirit is used as symbolic expression of her distorted psyche.