"Ariel" has numerous meanings, all of which relate to the area of study, inner journeys. The main journey being that of a journey from life into death. In knowing that the poet, Sylvia Plath suffered from failed marriages, discrimination against gender and problems as a child, it can be assumed that the poem is autobiographical. With this it can be said that it is Plath as the protagonist of the poem who is undergoing a journey of rediscovering and defining herself. As seen through the different phases of the poem, in particular, "Godiva, I unpeel/dead hands, dead stringences". This is Plath's way of demonstrating her actions of living life and now her continuity of the journey into death. Plath's suicidal impulses, "Suicidal, at one with the drive", again reinforces this journey into death. The rising of the sun at the end of the poem, "Eye, the cauldron of morning" acts as a symbol of happiness and the fulfillment as death being the only way to escape the tretry of life.
             Another way at visualising the poem is the experience of horse riding. In her early twenties, Plath rode a horse named "Ariel" at Dartmoor, Devonshire. With this, it can be said that the poem represents freedom that is gained through mastery and control. The horse ride is used metaphorically in comparing the ride as a feeling of freedom within one's self and life as a whole. The freedom felt whilst riding the horse no longer becomes a lesson of pleasure, rather the abandonment of restraints, such as a past self, "the child's cry melts into the wall". It is when the course of the poem changes from a horse ride to an arrow, "And I/ am the arrow" that it is evident to the reader that the poem contains more than one meaning.
             The process of riding a horse can also be seen as a metaphor for the process of writing a poem. This can be seen through the styl
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