Samuel Sanders Sanders 1

Prof. Tubbs

ENGL 1302-129

30 April 2020
Cleansing Confessional

Poetry tends to use allusions and metaphors to convey or portray their true emotion to the

audience to give a more in depth and personal understanding. Of the few major issues in Sylvia

Plath’s life, at the young age of 10 she lost her father, developed depression later, and then in

adulthood had a miscarriage. Afterwards, she had a failed marriage from finding out her spouse

was conducting adultery with a tenant that they were renting a living space to. There were

multiple depressive episodes that concluded with medical attention after suicide attempts as she

has suffered throughout her life until death at the age of 30. Plath is a poet that incorporates her

neurological trauma into some of her works with allusions to reflect her emotions and struggles

with her mental health such as using the biblical Lazarus character and the mythical phoenix

creature in one of her last poems, “Lady Lazarus”, to parallel her survival after attempts of

suicide, and to represent her cleansing of her troubles.

Susan Van Dyne speculates “In ‘Lady Lazarus’ the poet worried not only about how she

would define the self but how she would defend it” (395). Plath would defend it as if she would

defend her own thoughts because parts of her poetry are something she relates to if not directly

described about her own struggle in life. Van Dyne continues, “she borrowed the miracle of

Lazarus, the myth of the phoenix, the hype of the circus, and the horror of the holocaust to

prophesy for herself a blazing triumph over her feelings of tawdriness and victimization” (397). I

would agree with Van Dyne that Plath is borrowing these ideas to convey her feelings and to

express her outlook of herself in life. She was strong and confident in her poetry, and wanted to

continue to fight for her life and future as she even says in a note to her mother, “I am a genius of
 Sanders 2

a writer; I have it in me. I am writing the best poems of my life; They will make my name”

(395). Her confidence, pain, and talent combined made good use of Lazarus to make great

poetry.

Another interpretation I would agree more on the same character of Lazarus is with

Constantakis’ as they as they say, “she views her own death and resurrection as a double of

Lazarus, but one that has become cheap and tawdry in the modern world, devalued from the ideal

type of the religious text” (179). It is common with mental health patients to express their

thoughts and emotions to help cope with issues, and Plath here using Lazarus as a symbol would

be her view of a miracle of herself coming back from the low points of depressive episodes.

Which it would mean to be accurate with the use of Lazarus in her poetry work to describe

herself. She may have only done self-harm a couple of times, but it would be possible of her to

have those thoughts prior than would cause stress and suffering. Her views of her own survival

make her feel different from other people, and believes it is just as a miracle for herself to

temporarily overcome those thoughts and actions. However, what I believe Constantakis is

saying that Plath’s “resurrections” are not recognized with full praise and disbelief as a biblical

character. Instead, she is just another poet or person that is feeling down with the struggles of

life.

Another mythical idea is the phoenix which is used at the end of the same poem of “Lady

Lazarus”. Parvin Ghasemi quotes Ober’s explanation, “[t]he entire symbolic procedure of death

and rebirth in ‘Lady Lazarus’ has been deliberately chosen by the speaker. She enacts her death

repeatedly in order to cleanse herself of the ‘million filaments’ of guilt and anguish that torment

her….[T]hese attempts at rebirth are unsuccessful until the end of the poem” Ober 125 Ghasemi
 Sanders 3

298. Which they are accurate that Sylvia Plath does this in her personal life, however, the only

reason is because a new event has occurred in her life to make her struggle even more difficult.

I only disagree with Ghasemi’s and Ober’s interpretation of Plath’s use of a phoenix

since their view of it are unsuccessful attempts at rebirth until the end of the poem. She may have

had unsuccessful suicide attempts, but for someone to be harming themselves and overcoming

the attempt would give her a cleansing feeling. After the recovery of self-harm, she would feel

better about a lot of things and to move on from stresses of life until the next time, such as being

cheated on, the loss of an unborn child, and the effect of growing up without a father. She

acknowledges the fact that there is something wrong with herself that she struggles with and yet

moving onward would to her death, her poetry does become more famous. As Constantakis

notes, “paradoxically, the parts of the dead body, the very thing that had been triumphed over,

themselves became objects of worship” (180). Which in this case was Sylvia Plath’s poetry.

I believe people would agree on the similarities of the two allusions of Lazarus and a

phoenix; both are returning from death and restarting anew. With many interpretations, some

would agree that her poems are considered to be confessional poetry since that Plath’s works are

just about parallel to her reality considering her struggles and losses. With her pain and talent,

she best used the two allusions to best describe her suicide attempts and the feelings that were

with those depressive episodes.

 Sanders 4

Work Cited

Constantakis, Sara. "Lady Lazarus." Poetry for Students, edited by Sara Constantakis, vol. 49,

Gale, 2015, pp. 166-185. Gale eBooks, https://link-gale-

com.aclibproxy.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/CX3611700021/GVRL?

u=txshracd2904&sid=GVRL&xid=2ce2d161. Accessed 6 May 2020.

Oberg, Arthur. Modern American Lyric: Lowell, Berryman, Creeley, and Plath. Rutgers UP,

1978.

Ghasemi, Parvin. “Violence, Rage, and Self-Hurt in Sylvia Plath's Poetry.” CLA Journal, vol. 51,

no. 3, 2008, pp. 284–303. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org.aclibproxy.idm.oclc.org/stable/44325429. Accessed 4 May 2020.

Van Dyne, Susan. “Fueling the Phoenix Fire: The Manuscripts of Sylvia Plath's ‘Lady Lazarus.’”

The Massachusetts Review, vol. 24, no. 2, 1983, pp. 395–410. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/25089435. Accessed 5 May 2020.