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http://www.biography.com/people/sylvia-plath-9442550#suicide
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/06/why-sylvia-plath-haunts-american-culture/309310/
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/plath/ariel.htm
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http://emilyspoetryblog.com/2013/10/07/ariel-by-sylvia-plath/
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/49001
http://www.shmoop.com/ariel-sylvia-plath/analysis.html
http://files.harpercollins.com/OMM/ariel.html
The series of transformations she undergoes in this poem, as well as the actions she takes lend serious ground for feminist discussion. In the finale of the poem, as she builds up speed and tries to form herself a new identity, the i sound is repeated to represent the "I" of her identity. First in the poem she becomes a stallion, a masculine image, the image of a repressor. Then as she picks up speed she becomes an arrow, a penetrating force which alongside her becoming "one with the drive". She then becomes water(dew), which is defined as a feminine symbol, as well as a symbol for purity. She embraces her ride and all of its power, including sexual power, and is able to ignore a child's cry that "melts in the wall." On this ride, she can firmly declare her feminine independence away from stifling patriarchal forces.
Plath was dealing with a patriarchal society, and after her husband leaves her for another woman, was faced with mental illness and taking care of her two kids. She was battling the forces of society, the trivialities of daily life, and her own mental demons.
Enjambment
rhyme
imagery
slant rhyme
Tercets
The attention is back to the horse Ariel, but again, instead of a clear narrative or description, we get only flashes of images—Ariel's "thighs, hair" which "haul" our speaker "through air."
imagery
Enjambments
rhyme
alliteration
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
A picture her chilling in the pre-dawn morning, where there's "stasis in darkness." "Stasis" -something's at rest. Nothing much is happening in the darkness. Then everything changes. Suddenly, our speaker is faced with the "substanceless blue" - thin, blue morning air- and the "pour of tor and distances." Tor-hills or rocky peak
Something else
Hauls me through air—
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.
White
Godiva, I unpeel—
Dead hands, dead stringencies.
consonance
Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks—
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else
Hauls me through air—
metaphor
rhyme
allusion
Hauls-The speaker hasn't chosen this wild ride, and it she's dug in her heels so tightly to hang on that either the horse's hair, the skin of her feet, or both is flaking off.
Images continue to flash by our speaker's eyes as she's on her wide ride. She sees "Nigger-eye / Berries" that "cast dark / Hooks." The n-word is used to describe some dark-colored berries that she sees fly by her. She imagines that she can taste these sweet berries and they cast hooks around her.
Blood- morbid imagery (death)
Are these the shadows that the speaker sees flying by her from atop her horse? Or are these shadows more metaphorical?
In these dashes we feel the quickness of Ariel's movement
God’s lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow
Compared to Lady Godiva, she's both making herself a kind of folk hero and alluding to the sexuality of the myth.
Ariel has taken off at an uncontrollable gallop, and we're losing our grip on what's happening right along with the speaker. The narrator is going on a disorienting ride.The speaker calls her "God's lioness," perhaps to make her seem fierce, even otherworldly. We see the "pivot"—the movement—of the horse's "heels and knees.", "the brown arc / Of the neck," which is "sister," or somehow alike to, the "furrow" or trail in the ground below. She then literally loses her grip.
We see these images as flashes, as the speaker does.
Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch
Stringencies- restrictions
She sheds, like Lady Godiva, the restrictions of a severe culture.
Her whiteness contrasts with the earlier image of the blood, and set up a visual, stark contrast with this whiteness.
consonance
allusion(demeter)
Feminized metaphor
She imagines herself as "foam" among the wheat fields she's traveling through. She's "a glitter of seas."
"child's cry / Melts in the wall."- Is the speaker a mother? Or is it her own cry?
And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child's cry
Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,
The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning.
assonance
The speaker is so closely intertwined with Ariel that it's as if the two of them together are the arrow, galloping with determined intent(suicidally).
"Arrow" and "Ariel" sound similar, hinting that they have become one.
Red eye= the sun. They are riding into the flaming sunrise
The sun is compared to a cauldron of morning, meaning it is not a happy sun, rather a dark, gloomy sun
She's an arrow heading towards the bullseye of the sun.
metaphor
Person spoke to in the Poem
There is no particular reference to a
specific person or audience. It can be interpreted as speaking to the horse, as the persona uses "we" when speaking of the horse.
Plath doesn't waste much time setting the scene, or giving us lots of details about our speaker or her setting, instead focusing on what speaker is feeling and sensing. The speaker of the poem describes a "God's lioness", a reference to the horse, and how the female rider rides at the break of dawn through the countryside, losing her grip on the horse. While it is not clear whether Plath wrote it with herself as the speaker, clues of the speaker include "White Godiva", an allusion to the legend of Lady Godiva, a woman who rode through the streets on a horse. The title of the poem is the name of Plath's horse, supporting the idea that she got inspiration from her horse riding.
Hauls me through air—
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.
White
Godiva, I unpeel—
Dead hands, dead stringencies.
And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child’s cry
Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
God’s lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow
Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,
Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks—
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else
The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning.
Plath created the poems that would make up the collection Ariel (1965), which was released after her death. Sylvia Plath committed suicide on February 11, 1963. After her death, Ted Hughes became her literary executor. He put together the work "Ariel", and was in charge of choosing the works to put in the collection.The poems in the 1965 edition of Ariel, with their free flowing images and characteristically menacing psychic landscapes, marked a dramatic turn from Plath's earlier "Colossus" poems.
Shakespeare's The Tempest
Plath wrote the poem "Ariel" two years before her death. During this time she was dealing with depression, her husband cheating on her, and taking care of her two kids. She would usually wake up in the mornings and write her poems before her children woke.
"Long before, while she was a student at Cambridge (England), she went riding with an American friend out towards Grantchester. Her horse bolted, the stirrups fell off, and she came all the way home to the stables, about two miles, at full gallop, hanging around the horse’s neck." -Ted Hughes