Lady Lazarus September 18, 2014

Sylvia Plath(1935) poet and novelist, born in Boston, Massachusetts. She mar ried Ted Hughes in 1956. After teaching in America she an d Hughes returned to England in 1959. Her first volume of poetry, The Colossus, appeared in 1960, and in 1963 her only novel The Bell Jar. Less than a month after its publication she committed suicide in London.

Lady Lazarus Plath describes the speaker's oppression with the use of World War II Nazi Germany allusions and images. She develops a German image to denote Nazism and in t urn, oppression. She accounts this connotation to the doc tors in the poem, such as calling the doctor Herr Doktor, because they continue to bring her back to life when all s he wants is to finally die. At the end of the poem, she is represented by the image of a phoenix. This next decade will be different for the sp eaker because she plans to "eat" the men, or doctors, so t hey cannot revive her next time she faces death.

“Dying/ Is an art, like everything else. /I do it exceptionally well” Paradox of Death “As a seashell./ They had to call and call/ And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.” “Dying/ Is an art, like everything else. /I do it exceptionally well” William Shakespeare refers to the nine lives myth in his play Romeo and Juliet. There is also an ancient proverb that claims, “A cat has nine lives. For three he plays, for three he strays and for the last three he stays.” The real issue is not whether she lives or die, but she wants to stop the exploitation of her life by ending her life while they want to continue the exploitation of her life by resurrecting her. The corruption of “resurrection”—cf. Jesus Resurrection to give a new life to man sacrificing his own life. Dying as a perfomance, a spectacle not as a serious natural phenomnon, cynical point of view on dying, and by extention on living as a woman in this male dominated world, signifying the lack of reality in the women’s life in this world.

My Dying, a Victim of Holocaust So, so, Herr Doktor. / So, Herr Enemy./ I am your opus,/ I am your valuable, / The pure gold baby/ That melts to a shriek. /I turn and burn. German Words denoting Nazi, Patriarchal Authority, Male Oppression. Critique on Commercialism, Materialism.

Author’s Imaginary Victory over Nazi(Men) Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air. Paradox of Death regarding Phoenix who commits a suicide to get another thousand years of life, that is, a renewal of life. She declares her determination to eliminate the people who obsturcts her real resurrection.