Language Matters

Sylvia Plath wrote this poem, in the months prior to her suicide. The poem captures her inner conflict as she attempts to come to terms with facing a seemingly cruel world alone. Despair pervades the poem through the cumulation of bleak images and a desperate, personal tone,  ‘Black bat airs/Wrap me, raggy shawls,/Cold homicides.’  The extended metaphor of a miner, ‘I am a miner’ and ‘I have hung our cave with roses’, elegantly conveys her vain attempts to hide away from the world whilst simultaneously striving to find something to value that will bring her joy and a sense of security. This precious object is the child as messiah that is discovered almost accidentally by Plath, ‘O love, how did you get here?’ The ‘baby in the barn’ is portrayed as Plath’s saviour, the resolution to her inner conflict, and possibly the saviour of all mankind.

Interestingly, Plath rejects formalised religion, referring to it cynically as a ‘A piranha/Religion, drinking/ Its first communion out of my live toes.’  This cynical attitude is further conveyed through her sarcastic reference to the ‘holy Joes’. Plath’s conflict with society’s valuing of religion reflects the existential crisis pervading her context. Her modern world has just morphed into the post-modern world where faith in religion has waned, replaced by a questioning of all absolute values – including traditional religious beliefs and moral frameworks.

This eternal existential conflict becomes more immediate for Plath as she internalized it with her genuine concern for the safety of herself and her child. Her suggestion that the world is collapsing in on itself is both literal and metaphorical – she is aware of the wider conflicts within society, but she is more concerned with her own conflicted sense of self. The child who the ‘blood blooms clean’ in is her one remaining hope – the reason she continues to live. On a macrocosmic level, however, the child is symbolic for humanity and the belief that the determination and strength of individuals will save the human race, despite the loss of religion and a stable moral framework.

In connecting this poem to  Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus the King’, it is apparent that it is an inversion of the play’s narrative and a subversion of its teachings about the role of man in relation to the gods. For Sophocles his protagonist, Oedipus, begins as a man of action, self-confidence and pride. However as the plot unravels and he discovers the truth about his past, his self-assurance declines. The flaw for Oedipus is his hubris and results in the fracturing of his self-conception and a dislocation from his known world. This contrasts distinctly with the persona in Plath’s poem who initially lacks confidence in herself and in her place in the world. By the end of the poem she has recovered slightly and reveals greater confidence in her future thanks to her faith in the child.

Whilst the poems can be contrasted in relation to the main characters’ identity, they can also be contrasted in relation to the perception of the role of religion and the individual. For Sophocles, the play ‘Oedipus the King’ is a vehicle through which he can make comment on the shifting view of the gods and man as evident in his world. Oedipus’ doubts in regards to the potency of the oracle’s prophecies and his belief in his own power as being equal to the gods is a narrative device established to question individuals holding similar views in Sophocles’ time. By representing Oedipus’ tragic and confronting fall, Sophocles reminds his audience of man’s place within the universe he is but a man.

In contrast, Plath’s poem suggests that religion is constraining and unreliable. It provides no comfort for her, rather it drains her of her life. This frustration with religion is highly reflective of her questioning and critical context. (See note above on poem). For Plath, the solution to her existential conflict is the determination and power of man to change the future. For Sophocles, the solution is a reaffirming of man’s awareness of his fallibility in relation to the gods and a predetermined universe.