Raising Lady Lazarus (Explication of Sylvia
A spotlight focused on a pale woman, wrists bandaged, scarred, and bleeding. Now standing on display, the feature in a showcase of medical miracles, now regarding the ringmaster in his white doctor's uniform, a red swastika in place of his name badge. The crowd shoves in to see. Step right up, get your peanuts, hot popped popcorn in greasy red stripped bags. Tapping the heart monitor with a chubby digit the ringmaster announces his transcendent power through a rusted megaphone as her heart continues to thump and she, always a performer, takes her bows. Once more she has tempted death and lived. But behind her stage makeup she is the same woman, the same troubled, suicidal Lady, biding time until her next trick. Sylvia Plath's life and poetry show a hidden life, one of a highly intelligent passionate soul trapped in the role of a traditional 1950's woman. Over and over in her journals and writing she conveyed the importance of putting on an outwardly pleasant show for her ever-present audience. Only through her prose and poetry could she be truly free. Perhaps that is why "Lady Lazarus" and so many of Sylvia Plath's other poems a
Most of Plath most passionate and well-known poetry was written in the same time span. She crawled under the front porch and purposefully overdosed on sleeping pills. Lady Lazarus was written in a fount of inspiration during the last months of 1962, only months after she discovered her husband was having an affair earlier that year. With the change in language her caregiver takes on a Nazi identity. Lady Lazarus asks her enemies to "Peel off the napkin" (10) just as the original Lazarus was covered with a "napkin. Nakedness -- "unwrap me hand and foot-- / The big strip tease" (28-29) -- was extraordinarily uncomfortable for a woman in Plath's era. " Some believe Plath may not have wanted her suicide attempt to succeed, that, more likely, it was to get the attention of her ex husband. "Lady Lazarus" is the prelude to the real thing. The night before her suicide she left a note for her neighbor, Trevor Thomas, to call her doctor expecting him to find it early the next morning. And presently he that had been dead came forth, bound feet and hands with winding bands; and his face was bound about with a napkin. "Lady Lazarus" brings to light some of her insecurities about her gender. Plath's concern over the physical body, however, is not surprising. Plath manages to transform ugly feelings into beautiful images for readers.
Common topics in this essay:
Lady Lazarus,
Lazarus Dying,
Sylvia Plath,
Sylvia Plath's,
Lazarus Testament,
Trevor Thomas,
Strip Tease,
Hitler References,
Jews Instead,
Lady Lazarus's,
lady lazarus,
sylvia plath,
suicide attempt,
sylvia plath's,
herr doktor,
plath's life,
flesh / grave,
male figures,
cave ate,
grave cave,
wedding ring,
grave cave ate,
/ grave cave,
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Acceptance Essays
