Lady Lazarus (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Sylvia Plath
- First Published: 1965
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Parents and children, Suicide, World War II, Cats, War, Fathers, Women, Death or dying, Revenge, Bible, biblical imagery, or biblical symbolism, Nazism or Nazis, Holocaust, Jewish, Resurrection, Concentration camps
The Poem
“Lady Lazarus” is an extraordinarily bitter dramatic monologue in twenty-eight tercets. The title ironically identifies a sort of human oxymoron, a female Lazarus—not the biblical male. Moreover, she does not conform to society’s traditional idea of ladylike behavior: She is angry, and she wants revenge. She is egocentric, using “I” twenty-two times, “my” nine. Her resurrection is owing only to herself. This is someone much different from the grateful man of John 11:2 who owes his life to Jesus.
Given Sylvia Plath’s suicide, one might equate...
[The entire page is 1593 words long]
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