Cut by Sylvia Plath is a very vivid poem that examines bleeding and pain in very gruesome detail with strong and graphic imagery.

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Pooja Pandey

Cut by Sylvia Plath is a very vivid poem that examines bleeding and pain in very gruesome detail with strong and graphic imagery. However, Plath manages to thrill the reader with her ability to draw us into her close observation of the injury that she has described in the poem. The way she chose to depict her blood loss became an extended metaphor for the whole of American history. This poem shows the emotions that Sylvia Plath feels and it also illustrates the strong political stance.

Tone and Mood

This poem starts of with a domestic scene, it seems. Maybe preparing for dinner which later on develops into a blur of physical and emotional senses, where she finds some kind of joy in an accident. Plath dedicated this poem to her nanny, Susan O´neill Roe as a “welcome to the family” gesture. Plath describes the feelings of self - mutilation and the emotional release that she feels. The mood of this poem is one of sadness and seriousness. The tone of this poem is very dark and gloomy but at the same time it feels like Plath felt a certain kind of satisfaction when she wrote this poem. The satisfaction in this poem comes from Plath´s identification of her father via aggression towards herself.

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Style

There is no consistent rhyme in the poem. However, Plath does use several other devices such as metaphors and imagery to enhance the meaning of the poem. She starts of the poem by dedicating it to a Susan O´neill Roe, and then she writes “what a thrill, My thumb instead of an onion”, this is very ironic because she compares cutting her thumb to a thrill. “Dead white and then a Red plush” , she uses imagery to compare the snow white that is her skin before she cuts it and then “red plush” is the actual ...

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