Sylvia Plath
Many who admire Sylvia Plath look with considerable astonishment at the normalcy of her childhood and life. To most Plath always seemed to be a motivated, brilliant and energetic individual who seemed to have had everything going for her as a middle class girl living in the 1950's. But when compared her life to her poetry and her history of depression, it hardly seems as if she came from such a "typical" background. The elements that indicate Sylvia Plath led a melancholy life is the death of her father, the periods of depression she underwent, and her attempt at suicide that resulted in her death.First, one element that indicates Sylvia Plath led a melancholy life is her father's death. Plath was born on October 27th, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts into the home of Otto and Aurelia Plath. Her home was in Winthrop, a seaside town near Boston that helped Plath to develop her poetic and artistic voice as a child through her fascination with the sea. The death of Plath's father, Otto Plath had a enormous impact on many of Plath's childhood memories. Plath had a strong relationship with her father, and "apparently, idolized him" (Unger 529) which made it very difficult for her when he died of complications from a negl
She also used many symbols in her poetry and writings, one of her most famous pieces using symbols is from "The Bell Jar"- "I saw my life branching out before me like [a] green fig tree. Deeply troubled, Plath committed suicide on a cold February morning of 1963. Plath's concerns in college were one of a typical college student in the 1950's such as "clothes, men, cream-colored convertibles, friends, blind dates, grades, and the need to be 'versatile'"(Unger 530). Her experiences in New York left her feeling "very ecstatic, horribly depressed, shocked, elated, enlightened, and enervated. She then won a Fulbright Fellowship to Newnham College, Cambridge in England the spring of 1955. She was on the National Honors Society and received a several prestigious scholarships. As Unger put it, Plath was a "perfectionist" (530) and made high grades; none lower than B's. Second, another element that indicates Sylvia Plath led a melancholy life are the periods of depression that she went through. At college she was well known, considered bright, active, and highly motivated. Plath's first experience with depression came when she was twenty-one in the summer of 1953 after she returned from a guest editorship with the magazine Mademoiselle in New York. Plath's poetry is very unique; her poetic voice is very strong and full of motivated meaning. This is when her marriage to Ted Hughes, a British poet, became difficult when she found out that he had started to see another woman.
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