Compare And Contrast The Way Plath Presents The Speaker's Fears In Three Of The Poems That You Have Studied

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Emma Rowley 4J

English Lit Coursework

Compare And Contrast The Way Plath Presents The Speaker’s Fears In Three Of The Poems That You Have Studied

        Sylvia Plath writes poems that are thoughtful and intriguing. They have clever and subtle suggestions that leave her poems open for interpretation by the reader. Her poems mainly have themes with either an odd or disturbing nature. The three poems I have chosen to compare and contrast are; “Mirror,” “Bluebeard” and “The Arrival of The Bee Box.”

        In the three poems there are several different moods that are shown throughout. In “Bluebeard” the speaker remains in control all the time, she is defiant and makes her own choices in stating, “I am sending back the key;” she is rejecting him and it is always her option whether or not to. However throughout “Bluebeard” the speaker’s tone remains constant and never changes unlike in “The Arrival of The Bee Box” in which her disposition changes constantly. At the beginning of the poem the poem begins with the speaker describing the box calmly “I ordered this, clean wood box” this creates a pleasant image even though it is a “box of maniacs.” The box is full of something very dangerous. If the box were to be opened then the speaker would be unleashing hundreds of bees and yet she describes the box as being something pleasant instead of ominous and foreboding. Then as the poem progresses the speaker becomes obsessed and fascinated with the box and is unable to leave it, absorbed by the power that she possesses over the bees. “It’s like a Roman mob,” could be referring to the fact that the emperor in ancient Rome had complete control over the lives of the many people and she now could similarly let all the bees, “die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.” However, she fears complete control as she doesn’t want to be a dictator over them “I am not Caesar.” Later in the play her mood relaxes and she “will set them free.”  In “Mirror” the mood remains constant as the speaker is a neutral object that is “unmisted by love or dislike.” The mirror can not be influenced by feelings that would usually change a person’s opinion or view of you, the “unmisted” mirror takes in exactly what it sees and replicates it.

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All three poems generally convey Sylvia Plath’s speaker’s emotions and feelings towards the people surrounding them and several inevitabilities such as old age. In “Mirror” the poem, although it is written in the first person, is written as if she is a neutral object observing another person. The speaker is the mirror observing someone else’s emotions towards the mirror, “she rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands,” this is Plath’s reflection on old age and how women are afraid of the future as it is often associated with imperfection and the unknown. The speaker is afraid of the ...

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