Sylvia Plath’s “The Elm Speaks” Dutch elm disease is one of the most devastating shade tree diseases the earth has ever seen. It is a wilt disease with an extremely high fatality rate. The disease is characterized by gradual yellowing of the leaves and defoliation. This is caused be a fungus which is transmitted from diseased trees to healthy trees by insects known as bark beetles. In the 1962 villanelle “The Elm Speaks” confessionalist Sylvia Plath compares her depressed emotional state with Dutch elm disease, which killed millions of Elm trees around the world. In the fourteen stanza poem written only one year before her suicide, a bitter Plath cries out with pain. The theme of depression originates from the loss of love in her marriage to Ted Hughes. The poem is extremely rich in metaphorical language from beginning to end.
In many ways the poem is designed to fit the definition of a villanelle. “The Elm Speaks” is a free verse poem with chaotic While living in London, Sylvia Plath had a massive elm tree in front of he house that became the subject of this poem. In the first stanza, she mentions her “great tap root,” which is the very bottom of the elm’s roots. This line symbolizes that she has reached the very bottom of her depression. She describes her depression further in stanza two as a “sea of dissatisfactions,” “or the voice of nothing” meaning it is raging inside of her.
The Essay on Plath Sylvia
Even in her earlier poems, Sylvia Plath displays an unhealthy preoccupation with sex, madness, morbidity and obscurity. There seem to be a number of common themes running through all of Plaths poems, which encapsulate her personal attitudes and feelings of life at the time she wrote them. Of these themes, the most prevalent are: sex, madness, morbidity and obscurity. The whole concept of sex to ...
At the same time she has an empty feeling which is driving her mad. Afterwards, in stanza three, she compares love to a shadow, a dark reflection of someone which is not real and can not be touched. “Till your head is a stone, you pillow a little turf” creates the image of a grave stone in stanza four. “The sounds of poisons” in stanza five refers to what Hughes, her husband, has done to her and how it burns inside of her killing her like “arsenic”. In stanza six she expresses that she has been through a lot, but she has always gotten through it. In stanza seven, however, she admits that she has broken down and can not and will not take her pain anymore. Next, in stanza eight she describes the moon, which is normally calming, as merciless, meaning that even the few things in life she used enjoy are now driving her insane. Similarly, in stanza nine, she talks about dreams and how they “possess and endow” her. In other words she feels as if she is trapped inside an ongoing nightmare. In the tenth stanza she confesses that she is holding everything in and that nightly it “flaps out” which means she cries herself to sleep. She is terrified of her depression and its effects on her, which she admits in stanza eleven. Next, in stanza twelve she portrays the “faces of love” as “pale irretrievable” saying that one can never find love, it is out of reach. For the second time in the poem, in stanza thirteen, she admits that she can not take the pain she is suffering anymore. Finally in the last stanza, she uses sexual imagery that for the most part states, the fact that The later years of Plath’s life, when she wrote “The Elm Speaks”, were very tragic. She suffered from a vast number of mental illnesses, including being bipolar or manic depressive.
Her moods were constantly up and down, one minute happy the next sad. Just one year before she wrote this poem she suffered through her second miscarriage, which was shortly followed by an appendectomy. Through all of this her husband Ted Hughes abused her both mentally and physically, driving her deeper into her depression. During these difficult years she wrote Ariel, a volume of poetry mainly concerning subjects such as injury, victimization, parasitism, alienation, brutality, war, cannibalism, death in all forms, torture, murder, suicide, mental illness, and anger. Only one week after Ariel was completed she viciously committed suicide by putting her head in the oven after making her children breakfast on the morning of February eleventh, 1963. In her poetry it is obvious that suicide was something she had been considering for a long time, becoming an Throughout “The Elm Speaks” Plath generates a basic them of depression. She presents herself as being the victim of a horrible love relationship that has ruined her. She uses many different techniques to help create her theme. The first, and most obvious, is her word choice. She uses words such as fear, madness, poisons, arsenic, shriek, hiss, and kill.
The Essay on Love Suicide of Amijima
Choose one or two character(s), and describe how the ideas affect the ways in which he or she acts, speaks. The ideas of Confucianism and Buddhism are highly conveyed in the play, The Love Suicides of Amijima. Within the play, these two religions both influenced a lot of the characters’ actions and conversations, especially Jihei’s and Koharu’s. Buddhism provided the religious background to these ...
These keep the reader unsettled. The second is her intensely powerful concluding line, “That kill, that kill, that kill.” This helps to establish theme because it is the very last thing the reader reads, therefore it withholds in the mind. Lastly, throughout the poem she makes undefined references to suicide or death. The first, in line eleven, “Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf” creates an image of a grave. Later, in stanza five, “the sounds of poisons” and “arsenic” give the reader the idea of both murder and suicide. Finally, the first line of stanza thirteen, “I am incapable of more knowledge” can be interpreted that she can not take her life anymore. This gives the reader the impression that she may be considering suicide. Because of these things, the themes of depression and fury are wonderfully captured giving the reader a good sense of Plath’s anger. The entire poem is filled with elaborate metaphorical language. The most important is the metaphor of the elm tree. A strong, beautiful tree, suddenly killed by Dutch elm disease, which began to spread wildly in London during the early 1960’s.
In this metaphor Plath, the strong elm tree, dies in London in 1963, is internally killed by Hughes, the Dutch elm disease. A smaller metaphor, in stanza three, uses a horse, which stands for manliness, or Hughes, and hooves running away, or Hughes leaving her. Also, in stanzas six and seven she gives the image of a storm which is a metaphor for the anger toward Hughes which is storming inside of her. Later, in stanza ten she is “inhabited by a cry”, the cry signifies the her need for love. Afterwards, in stanza eleven the “dark thing” she is afraid of represents the need for love she feels inside. Lastly, the “knowledge” she has become “incapable of” in stanza thirteen symbolizes that she can no longer stand the pain she has learned to accept. The metaphors Plath uses throughout the poem help to create a clear “The Elm Speaks” fits many of the characteristics of a villanelle. A villanelle is a type of poem having only two strategically placed inner rhymes. This poem has one at the beginning and one at the end. The first are fear and hear in the third and fourth line, and the second will and kill are in lines forty-one and forty-two.
The Essay on Summer Love Partner Stanza Poem
"Summer Love" is a poem written by Marilyn Chin about a girl's range of emotion as she experiences uncommitted relationships over her summer vacation. The girl starts out detached from any sort of serious feelings for her partner. As the poem progresses she expresses lust and gets physical with her partner which then causes her to be concerned over her brief, uncommitted encounters and the ...
When the words she chose are put together; fear, hear, will, and kill, they generate the idea that the fear you are hearing in her will kill her. This makes it clear that they are very carefully chosen and placed. Also, villanelle stanzas are always tercets, which is true throughout this poem. Finally, in most villanelles, the first and third line in each stanza have the same number of syllables. In “The Elm Speaks” this is only true in three of the stanzas. First, in stanza seven they each have eleven syllables. Second, in stanza thirteen, each consists of ten syllables. At the end, in the fourteenth stanza each line contains only six syllables. The meter in the poem from the first line to the last is completely chaotic, which can be seen in the following: I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root. I do not fear it; I have been there. Or the voice of nothing that was your madness? Listen. These are its hooves. It has gone off, like a horse. All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously, Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.
I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires. Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs. Will tolerate no bystanding; I must shriek The moon, also, is merciless; she would drag me Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her. Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery. How your bad dreams possess and endow me! Looking, with its hooks, for something to love. All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievable? So murderous in its strangle of branches? It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults The chaos in the meter may signify the disruption she is feeling “The Elm Speaks” is a free verse poem having very little rhyme, consisting of many assonance and consonance. The only rhyme throughout the poem, as stated before, are the two inner rhymes, fear, hear, will, and kill. From beginning to end, the poem contains massive amounts of assonance. The most obvious are the O’s. Each stanza consists of a least seven or eight O’s including the many sets of double O’s. Also, E’s are very common in each stanza, containing as many as 7 E’s. The most common consonance are the many N’s and S’s. Each stanza has an average of as many as eight S’s and N’s. Other than these few patterns, the poem is a completely free verse poem. In conclusion, Plath masterfully expresses her feeling of hurt, do to the painfully hard years she was struggling through.
The Essay on Speaker Lawrence Stanzas Poem
The peculiar essence of the poem 'Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister' written by Robert Browning lies in the impression of violent and disordered hatred. This feeling is revealed by the very structure of the work. The poem is framed by bestial growl at first word and closing line. The first onomatopeaic growl opens the soliloquist's confession of malice for Brother Lawrence: 'Gr-r-r -- there go my ...
Because of this, her themes of depression and anger jump out at the reader. Also, the beautifully written metaphorical language helps to establish the theme. Many of the traits in this free verse poem make it a villanelle. In the fourteen stanza poem “The Elm Speaks” Sylvia Plath wonderfully achieves her comparison with the elm tree, which also suffered during the time of Dutch elm disease, which it eventually died from. “The Elm Speaks” I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root. I do not fear it; I have been there. Or the voice of nothing that was your madness? Listen. These are its hooves. It has gone off, like a horse. All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously, Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic. I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires. Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs. Will tolerate no bystanding; I must shriek The moon, also, is merciless; she would drag me Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her. Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery. How your bad dreams possess and endow me! Looking, with its hooks, for something to love. All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievable? So murderous in its strangle of branches? It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults SYLVIA PLATH’S “THE ELM SPEAKS”
The Term Paper on Elaboration Likelihood Theory Elm 2002
Elaboration Likelihood 2 Introduction Recently the nation was bombarded with political ad campaigns of all shapes and sizes. There were the ads for and against succession, the ads that attempted to show Gray Davis as someone who could actually run the state of California, and the ads that didn't really seem to have any purpose at all. It is obvious that each of these campaigns was focused on a ...
