AICE LIT MIDTERM: Plath Poems

Morning Song

Themes: motherhood, detachment towards a child. Look for imagery describing/related to love, museums, moths, babies, a “fat gold watch”

Sheep in Fog

Themes: isolation, uncertainty. Look for imagery describing/related to hills, fog, trains, bleak landscape

The Applicant

Themes: objectification, consumerism, conformity. Look for imagery describing/related to prosthetics, first person POV, commands, marriage, suits, tickets, domesticity, “a living doll”

Lady Lazarus

Themes: death & rebirth. Look for imagery describing/related to phoenixes, performances/theater, a lack of faces/identifying characteristics, art & death, “Herr”

Tulips

Themes: life vs. death, overstimulation. Look for imagery describing/related to tulips, white, hospitals, water/sinking, eyes

Death & Co.

Themes: death, fate. Look for imagery describing/related to the personification of death, two faces of death, death-gowns, the dead bell, the number two

Getting There

Themes: uncertainty, war and suffering, existentialism. Look for imagery describing/related to boxcars/trains, questions, war, machinery, mud, death

Medusa

Themes: female power, monstrosity. Look for imagery describing/related to cynical tones, second person POV, the ocean, commands

The Moon and the Yew Tree

Themes: religion, hopelessness. Look for imagery describing/related to trees, nature, religion (god, mary, saints), the color blue, a graveyard, the moon

A Birthday Present

Themes: death & desire. Look for imagery describing/related to couplets, first person POV, suicidal ideation, veils, quietness, presents, shine, addresses “you”, domesticity/roles

Letter in November

Themes: love & transformation, acceptance of death. Look for imagery describing/related to enjambment, love, first person POV, depictions of happiness and euphoria, barbarous holly, apples, literally the only time we see anything described as nice, usually related to nature

The Rival

Themes: jealousy & rivalry, womanhood. Look for imagery describing/related to love/positive connotations in reference to “you,” the moon as a “she”, mausoleum, “spiteful as a woman”

Daddy

Themes: oppression, memory. Look for imagery describing/related to statues, Nazis, Germany, memories, direct address to “you”, ancestry, devils, vampires

You’re

Themes: pregnancy. Look for imagery describing/related to babies, dodos, childlike similes, animals, holidays, half of the poem lacks enjambment

Fever 103

Themes: purity, fevers, lust. Look for imagery describing/related to fevers, hellfire, Isadora, scarves, Hiroshima, delicate, cherubs, depictions of ascending and becoming pure

Stings

Themes: femininity, power. Look for imagery describing/related to bees, honey, women, gossip, purity, an unknown man and his clothes, flying

Little Fugue

Themes: memory & identity & guilt. Look for imagery describing/related to senses, music, yew & yew hedge, “he/him/his,” clouds, first person pov, memory

Years

Themes: contrast between static nature of eternity and chaos of life. Look for imagery describing/related to horses, eternity, stasis, religion/God, movement/motion

The Munich Mannequins

Themes: womanhood, fertility, societal pressures. Look for imagery describing/related to Munich, mannequins (duh), perfection, trees of life, “me",” glittering, domesticity, a hotel setting

Paralytic

Themes: paralysis, confinement. Look for imagery describing/related to first person POV, light, monostiches, cellophane, magnolia, desire, relapse, women (“my wife",” “we’re you’re daughters”)