Thursday March 23rd Genre Blog:
                                         Lady Lazarus By Sylvia Plath

                     Lady Lazarus throughout shows the theme of Suffering.

In Lady Lazarus, the person in the poem has a lot of emotional connection with the author Sylvia Plath. The way she expresses the poem and the word choice she uses forms an idea that she is very unhappy and is suffering.
                  I have done it again.
                 One year in every ten
                  I manage it-
                  (Plath 1418)

                  Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
                  The first time it happened I was ten.
                  It was an accident.
                  (Plath 1419)

                  For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
                  For the hearing of my heart-
                  It really goes.
                  (Plath 1420)

These quotes grab my attention and shows that the "Lady Lazarus" that she is describing is not happy and suffering in many ways.

In class we discussed the idea of what Lady Lazarus means. That it is a strong religious symbol, dealing with "Jesus restoring him to life four days after his death" and "to a cat with nine lives" (Plath 1419) . Christ and "the most irresistible enemy of humanity-death" which we see a lot of in this poem.
                                         
We had a classmate present the Literary Context presentation on Confessional Poetry which we learned a lot about the author Sylvia Plath and her rough past. Her father's death at the young age of eight years old. Had a big impact on Plath. Then soon after, while she was in college she attempted suicide by taking sleeping pills. Later on then she got married and had a child, but soon found out her husband was cheating on her and the marriage broke apart. She then, had the responsibility to take care of her children alone, and with little money. She then did not have much time to write her poems and stories but try to squeeze them into her schedule raising her children. Killing herself with cooking gas at the age of  30, what a sad life she had to suffer dealing with. Things never seemed to get better with her. Which gave the poems more emotion and a powerful control about death in her works. Like we see here in Lady Lazarus. The theme of Suffering connects to The Yellow Wallpaper as well, and one of the character is suffering from depression. She is trapped in her house, with a husband that doesn't seem to care much about her instead he cares more about being above her. Both connect to having poor husbands that treated the woman poorly, and they suffered because of it.

Other quotes that show suffering in the poem
              Dying
              Is an art, like everything else.
              I do it exceptionally well.
              (Plath 1419)

             I do it so it feels like hell.
             I do it so it feels real.
             I guess you could say I've a call.
             (Plath 1419)

When I read these quotes, I feel like she is depressed and crying out for help. She wants people to know what she is going through, and what she has gone through her whole life. Her pain and her suffering. The way she writes her lines in her poems are very short, and simple. There is also some repetition in the way she starts some of her lines. Which I think it gives more feeling, and makes us readers connect more to her to feel what she was really going through. The word choice was descriptive like "Ash, ash you poke and stir.Flesh,bone, there is nothing there" (Plath 1420). It gives you a detailed picture of the place of life she was in. The author Sylvia Plath wants to mock her own experience in this poem. We see that the author connects parts of the poem with the Holocaust.
                A sort of walking miracle, my skin
                Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
                My right foot
                (Plath 1418)

               A paperweight,
               My face a featureless, fine
               Jew linen.
               (Plath 1418)
I get the idea that she makes the unknown person in the poem into a Jew, in a concentration camp. That her life was horrible, just like the Jews life was like in the concentration camp. The horrors of the concentration camp are like the horrors she had in her life.  That she was burned by her father's death, and burned by her husband cheating on her. Then she was left to survive on her own with little money in the cold winter time. She suffered like the Jew's suffered in the concentration camp. Which is why I think she connects to those ideas. I feel bad for the way her life was lived. I am curious if any of her other poems suggest the idea that she was suffering for many years of her life. Maybe it was better that she could go to another place where she was much more happy where she isn't suffering anymore? I wonder how her children dealt with the things there mother dealt with and her death. Lady Lazarus was a great poem to read, but a rather odd and interesting poem to read.


http://www.sylviaplath.de/ for information about Sylvia Plath.