Sylvia Plath

Aaaabcdad Any scholar knows about the rigid style that most of the papers must follow in order to be considered academic works. Sylvia Plath a straight “A” student, honored with the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship, was not the exception. In her Metaphor poem, she uses a perfect descriptive process to introduce the readers in the undecipherable feeling of maternity. After a good introduction, a well organized body, and some resources of rhythm and metric, Plath guides readers to an uncertain conclusion that serves to emphasize the real sense of pregnancy. “I'm a riddle in nine syllables (Line 1)”. The first line acts as the introduction to the poem. By providing it, Plath gives the tools that we need to get into her work. Then, with the immediate use of the apostrophe she instructs us how to proceed, stating that the information that we will find must be read with a casual tone. As an ideal introduction, Plath captures the readers' interest, explaining that each of the following lines will be a whole concept ready to be deciphered. Gifted with analytical precision, Plath, involves us in a descriptive work using vivid and fresh language. She creates a clear pattern of organization, going from general to specific, through several lines that develop and describe pregnancy. She begins from outside, creating for us the first extraordinary association: “An elephant, a ponderous house” (Line 2). She doesn’t focus in arguments; instead she gives something big to visualize, and our own experiences complete her work: Extinction and veneration, or slowness and uselessness. We have not finished understanding her first clue, and she is already using her imaginative language to introduce us to something new and funny: “A melon strolling on two tendrils” (Line 3). Again the casual tone returns with a vivid explanation of the appearance. Using a maternal tone; she not recalls the words of a prepared woman. Instead she uses the words that she is going to use to read to her kids at bed time. Her body and her mind are changing to a loving and motherly language. Putting aside the form, Plath goes into a second explanatory level that continues elaborating the descriptive process: the necessities of a pregnant woman. “O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!” (Line 4) Loyal to an objective description she pictures senses in a way that only a woman who has been pregnant would understand. “O red fruit” resembling delicious tastes, “ivory” for required cold and fresh places; and “fine timbers” related to smells. All of them skillfully correlated parts of the sensorial process of the pregnancy that come to us recalling again our previous experiences. The two following lines denote the obvious conclusion, she is growing. “This loaf's big with its yeasty rising. Money's new-minted in this fat purse” (Line 5 6). As in a questioning and answering play, we are introduced in a different level of speculation: Something is happening and we need to guess what it is. However; the literate reader immediately discover that mixing two common concepts, bread and money, under her exquisite pen, Sylvia Plath make gala of her connotative style, playing in two levels to symbolize that her daily necessities will be increased too. Going deep into her clues, Plath begins to reach the last part of her description. “I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf” (Line 7). She uses three powerful concepts to talk to us about a temporary phase, or something to be developed. These three metaphors, united and correlated, help us understand the idea that Plath has about maternity. She considers herself a gadget with the purpose to develop a new being because she early understands the necessary rupture of the umbilical cord, in order to achieve the individuality of the human being. “I've eaten a bag of green apples” (Line 8) Debatable line, since I could not find any proximity of Plath to religion. It is clear that she is using the word apple as a biblical reminiscence of the reproductive act that leads to pregnancy. However; Linda Sue Grimes, has a valid point of view. For her “Eating a bag of green apples dramatizes the nausea and bloated sensations that accompany

pregnancy. Often, the pregnant woman will feel as though she has eaten too much, even when she has not, because the growing child is crowding the mother’s internal organs, and the sensation is very uncomfortable” (Grimes) After a perfect description of a woman’s physical condition, Plath creates the magisterial conclusion that will summarize her work. Going beyond the confines of her description, she pushes us ahead of the boundaries of the poem and allows us to consider broader issues, make new associations, and structure the significance of our findings. “Boarded the train there's no getting off” (Line 9) has been included in this poem to symbolize the compromise of Sylvia Plath to her pregnancy. Each line lets us visualize her fears and feelings of uncertainty. The same kind of uncertainty that has surrounded the nine months of pregnancy that each woman has faced since the very start of the human being, and that Sylvia Plath gave us as a tribute of her most extraordinary experience.