Compare and contrast Sylvia Plath 'Blackberrying', Sylvia Plath 'Mirror' and Elizabeth Jennings 'My Grandmother' using the theme loneliness and depression

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Compare and contrast Sylvia Plath ‘Blackberrying’, Sylvia Plath ‘Mirror’ and Elizabeth Jennings ‘My Grandmother’ using the theme loneliness and depression

I have chosen two poems by Sylvia Plath called ‘Blackberrying’ and ‘Mirror’. Plath was a manic depressive most of her life, she was married to Ted Hughes who later became poet laureate, but despite this marriage she claimed never to feel truly loved nor that she could give all her love to one person. She committed suicide at the age of 30 leaving two children and her husband so bereaved he did not write poetry for 3 years after her death. The other poem I have chosen is called ‘My grandmother’ by Elizabeth Jennings, she also suffered a mental breakdown at the age of 40 after the recovery from a serious illness. Like Plath the years of asperity in her life were enhanced in her poems and the comparisons between the two ways of expressing this loneliness and sadness are to be compared and contrasted in this essay.

In the poem ‘Blackberrying’ Plath talks about walking down a lane towards the sea whilst picking blackberries in a milk-bottle. The first verse of the poem starts by describing the fact that she is alone ‘nobody in the lane, and nothing’, does this imply that she is often on her own? and is she happy like this, or does she feel no-one knows the ‘real her’ that she has no-one she is really close to that she can talk to? Then the atmosphere changes and there are blackberries all around her and she is no longer alone. It’s almost as if she takes comfort in being with the blackberries as we see a few lines down she describes a relationship between herself and the blackberries ‘a blood sisterhood; they must love me’ She imagines the juice of the berries and her own blood mingling together, this bonding is what she’s missing from real life and perhaps wants to bond with people, possibly her husband but feels incapable of doing so.

There is a lot of articulation about the size and shape of the blackberries and how they are ‘on the right mainly’. I think this shows she likes to observe life and watch it go by, this can be compared to her other poem ‘Mirror’ where she goes into detail about how she meditates staring at the opposite wall thinking it has become part of her heart.

The line ‘the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks’ implies that the atmosphere has been broken and the calmness has been interrupted. There is also use of onomatopoeia on the pronunciation of the words ‘choughs’ and ‘cacophonous’. In verse two there is a lot of colour imagery from the black crows to the ‘green meadows’ and the ‘bluegreen bellies’ of the flies, these spurts of colour again begin to interfere with the calmness created in verse one. She repeats the word protesting in line 13 as if she’s asking why me, meaning she is obviously very upset or depressed about something in her life.

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There is a definite mood change in the last stanza, it is shown by the amount of space as she reaches the sea, and the nothingness that we saw in the first line of the poem comes back contrasting the masses of blackberries surrounding her before. She has a sudden snap out of the perfect fantasy world she has created ‘slapping its phantom laundry in my face’ the word laundry reminds us of everyday chores that we have to undertake it gives the impression she is being slapped back into the reality of everyday life. The mention of bright lights ...

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