The Struggle in Sylvia Plaths Lady Lazarus Essay - 702 Words

The Struggle in Lady Lazarusnbsp;nbsp;nbsp; nbsp; Lady Lazarus repeats the struggle between Nazi and Jew which is used in Daddy, with the Nazi atrocities a background across which the amazing, self-renewing speaker strides. The speaker orchestrates every aspect of her show, attempting to undermine the power an audience would normally have over her. She controls her body, instead of being a passive object of other eyes. The speaker orders her enemy to Peel off the napkin, telling the audience that there is a charge for her performance, but death to her is nothing but a big strip tease. Do I terrify? she asks rhetorically, she knows her effect on them. Lady Lazarus intentionally contributes to the spectacle that fetishises her;†¦show more content†¦No longer needing approval, she provides the answers. Her performance is self-sufficient, she does not need their applause. A propulsive quality in the poem is contributed by the assonances (all, call, well, hell, real, call, cell, theatrical) and the tercets, their succinctness adding to an inevitable motion towards the end. The repetitions also give her speech an incantatory quality. Lady Lazarus, as she remembers her first death, is given a choice between life and death, between the living, who had to call and call, and deaths vocation, I guess you could say Ive a call. The latter call to dying compels her in a way the other does not. The process of renewal is exhilirating, a childish, triumphant shriek accompanies it as she immolates herself. She rises out of the ashes, rejoicing in the power that she has over mere mortal men: I eat men like air. A contributing factor to the affective quality of Plaths work is that it appears so inseparable from the drama (and dramatisation) of her life and death. As Barbara Hardy notes, The personal presence in the poetry, though dynamic and shifting, makes itself felt in a full and large sense, in feeling, thinking, and language. (from Enlargement or Derangement? Ariel Ascending: Writings About Sylvia Plath, Paul Alexander, ed. (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1985)) Like Lady Lazarus who co-ordinates her own performance, Plath is also in control, fully aware of the different perceptions herShow MoreRelatedSylvia Plaths Lady Lazarus1289 Words   |  6 PagesSylvia Plath, author of â€Å"Lady Lazarus†, is â€Å"widely considered one of the most emotionally evocative and compelling American poets of the postwar period† (â€Å"Plath, Sylvia: Introduction†). Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts and her father died when she was eight. Plath attended Smith College and due to overwhelming conditions, she lapsed into a severe depression and overdosed on sleeping pills. 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