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How is death portrayed in Plath's "The Manor Garden"?
Sylvia Plath quotes about death
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
Dying is an art. Like everything else, I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I have a call.
The end
Thank you
"Some hard... heavens" this shows the speakers worries of being a mother and it's responsibilities.
She may be scared about what she is bringing the baby into : fourth stanza: suicide, "hours of blankness" etc) however on the last line she refers to it as a "gift", so the baby could be providing hope for a better future, even though it has to "inherit" many negatives.
-"Era of the fishes" could represent the baby developing/ evolution/ the cycle of fertility.
"Head, toe, finger"" could be allusions of her being satisfied with childbirth.
-The “broken flutings” and “crowns of acanthus” are ruins of great architecture, symbolic of the speaker’s now dispirited feelings towards the idealism of motherhood.
-"You..bee's wing" refers to the speakers unborn child indicating they will inherit good fortune.
Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 and died on February 11, 1963), and she was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College at the University of Cambridge, before receiving acclaim as a poet and writer.
She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956; and had two children, Frieda and Nicholas. Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life. She committed suicide in 1963.
Death and life
-The dry fountains suggest lack of life (death). While the roses over mean that a funeral is beginning.
-This line "Incense..approaches" hints at the death of her father. Also, the speaker, full of despair is confronting the idea of approaching motherhood.
-Her pregnancy brings unhappy self-reflection. She seems to compare the pears to her fat, Buddha frame.
The fountains are dry and the roses over.
Incense of death. Your day approaches.
The pears fatten like little buddhas.
A blue mist is dragging the lake.
You move through the era of fishes,
The smug centuries of the pig-
Head, toe and finger
Come clear of the shadow. History
Although the poem talks about death, it also includes imagery of childbirth, and motherhood, with its struggles;also talks about life.
The poem is themed around fertility, mortality, and decay.
religious reference
Two suicides, the family wolves,
Hours of blankness. Some hard stars
Already yellow the heavens.
The spider on its own string
Crosses the lake. The worms
Quit their usual habitations.
The small birds converge, converge
With their gifts to a difficult borning.
By: Dana Ataya IB1C