Lady Lazarus September 18, 2014
Sylvia Plath(1935) poet and novelist, born in Boston, Massachusetts. She mar ried Ted Hughes in After teaching in America she an d Hughes returned to England in 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.
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”
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.
Author’s Imaginary Victory over Nazi(Men) Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.