Discussion Topic
An analysis of themes, symbolism, and motivations in Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus"
Summary:
"Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath explores themes of death, resurrection, and female power. The poem uses symbolism such as the phoenix, representing rebirth, and the Holocaust, highlighting suffering and oppression. Plath's motivations include expressing her struggles with mental illness and reclaiming control over her identity and body through the act of poetic resurrection.
Why did Sylvia Plath write the poem "Lady Lazarus"?
Why does anyone write anything? To speculate is to diminish the art. The New Critics would not like this question...
Poetry is confession, catharsis, therapy, a way of making sense of the world, a chance to have one's words immortalized, and puzzle-making: putting the perfect words in the perfect order. Namely, the poem is her most mature attempt to make sense of her mental illness (which lead to previous unsuccessful suicide attempts), her family (father and mother), her ex-husband, and the cruelty, dehumanization, and absurdity of the modern world.
Plath attempts to be absurdist and confessional poet in "Lady Lazarus," her magnum opus along with "Daddy." Anne Stevenson lauds the paradoxical complexity of Plath's poetry, saying it "is all of a piece":
Its moments of tenderness work upon the heart as surely as its moments of terror and harsh resentment. And despite her exaggerated tone and the extreme violence of some of her energy, Plath did, courageously, open a door to reality.
Stevenson goes on to praise Plath's "Lady Lazarus" persona "with its agressive assertion of regeneration, rejoice[ing] in so much verbal energy that the justice or injustice of the poet's accusations cease to matter."
The poem does not condone suicide. Rather, it rises above it, if only for a moment. Her poetry works best in barrage: imagery against men, materialism, sexism, self, suffering, and tradition. Regardless of the poet, the poem, like all good art, affirms and breathes life.
What is the theme of "Lady Lazarus"?
We can relate this poem and its theme to the real life experience of its poet and her multiple suicide attempts. "Lady Lazarus," with the allusion that its title contains, automatically makes us think of Lazarus who was brought back to life by Jesus. This feeling of returning to life from death is something that pervades this poem, however, this poem relates this feeling from a uniquely female perspective as it focuses on the desire for revenge that is experienced by a female victim of male domination. It is the way in which the speaker has been dominated by the father that leads her to desire her revenge, although the precise nature of this revenge is never explored. Because of this, perhaps the central theme of this disturbing poem is the desire to turn the tables on patriarchy and for women to get their revenge for the way that they have been objectified and dominated throughout history.
Thus it is that the speaker of this poem has managed to turn the tables against her oppressor and has exchanged the myth of Lazarus for the myth of the phoenix, the mythical bird that dies only to be resurrected from its own ashes. The last stanza in particular seems to foreshadow the successful completion of the speaker's intention of gaining revenge against her father and men in general:
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
The theme of this poem is therefore one of the desire for revenge borne out of the age-old conflict between the two sexes. The way that women have been systematically dominated and abused throughout history leads the speaker of this poem to desire revenge and to yearn to be able to dominate and abuse men the way that she herself has been abused.
How does "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath use the theme of death?
The poem "Lady Lazarus" reflects Plath's obsession with death and suicide. There are several ways the theme of death is evoked, some direct and some reflecting Plath's own prototypical imagery and obsessions.
The title itself evokes the Biblical figure of Lazarus who died and was raised from the dead by Jesus. The narrator is someone who has been rescued after a failed suicide attempt and is lashing out at the people who saved her life. The poem is "confessional" in that Plath herself attempted to commit suicide multiple times until finally succeeding in 1963.
She addresses the audience in a bitter, sardonic tone, resenting that they have dragged her back from the brink of death and also speaking angrily about the way people seem to view the failed suicide as a freak show or spectacle. She describes herself as like the revived corpse of Lazarus or a victim of the Holocaust.
She feels a special sense of identity with the Jews slaughtered by the Nazis (despite herself being raised in the Unitarian Church as a middle-class daughter of a professor and attending the elite Smith College and Cambridge University). She evokes the theme of death in the Holocaust by mentioning the image of a Nazi lampshade made of human skin; one should note that the rumor that Ilse Koch had lampshades made from the skins of human victims at Buchenwald concentration camp was actually an urban myth.
The reference to "a bar of soap" which is part of the poem's death theme is based on an urban legend that the Nazis made bars of soap from the bodies of murdered Jews. The rumors themselves may have been propagated by some of the Nazis to frighten prisoners in concentration camps.
What symbolism is used in Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus"?
Sylvia Plath’s striking and vivid poem “Lady Lazarus” features a speaker – a young woman – who seems to have faced death on three different occasions. The poem draws on a numerous sources of imagery and symbolism, including popular culture (26, 29, 51-52) and crude commercialism (61-64), but the most shocking and most memorable symbolism derives from the holocaust – the systematic attempt by the Nazis, during World War II, to destroy the Jews (9). In this effort, at least six million people died.
In particular, Plath’s speaker compares herself repeatedly to the victims who suffered in Nazi concentration camps. Many of these victims were gassed to death, had their gold teeth removed, had their skin removed and turned into lampshades, had their fat boiled down and rendered into soap, and were finally disposed of by being burnt to ashes in crematoria. Often the victims were only babies, since babies were useless to the Nazis as workers or slaves (5; 65-80). The holocaust is commonly regarded as one of the most horrific atrocities in the history of humankind (which is saying quite a lot, given the long record of man's inhumanity to man).
Clearly the speaker of this poem sees herself, especially near the end of the work, as a victim, in much the same way that the Jews were victims of the Nazis. This, however, is arguably a highly questionable equation. Apparently the speaker has twice come close to dying through suicide attempts – deliberate choices to kill herself. Perhaps her choices were irrational and therefore not entirely under her control. Perhaps she genuinely does consider herself oppressed. However, it is arguably in very bad taste for the speaker (rational enough, after all, to be the articulate, literate speaker of this poem) to compare her suicide attempts to the victimization of millions of innocent men, women, children, and babies in the Nazi concentration camps.
It is possible to argue that the speaker simultaneously trivializes the deaths of others and sensationalizes her own deliberate flirtations with death. It is possible to argue that the poem exhibits both poor taste and bad faith. Perhaps Plath even intended it to be read as a subtle, covert satire of the speaker. At the very least, perhaps she even hoped that the symbolism and imagery used by the speaker would give us some slight pause and cause us some slight uneasiness about the speaker's possible egotism.
Interpreted in this way, the symbolism linking the speaker of the poem with the victims of the holocaust can seem, at least to some readers, grossly overblown and inappropriate:
So, so, Herr Doktor. 65
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek. 70
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash--
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-- 75
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Are we really meant to sympathize with this speaker? Can we really sympathize with this speaker? These are questions that may, for some readers, not be easy to answer. The poem’s heavy reliance on holocaust symbolism is, perhaps, entirely too heavy after all.
How does Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus" explore the theme of identity?
Plath uses an extended metaphor, that of a cadaver wrapped in burial cloth, to create an image of her outer covering, her skin, as her perceived identity. Lazarus was a man pronounced dead whom Jesus reportedly brought back to life, though he had already lain for four days dressed in his burial shroud. Plath compares herself to this, creating images of her skin being "peeled" off or "unwrapped" as allusions to this story from the New Testament. In this poem, her skin becomes the layers of cloth that create the shroud.
She describes her skin as a "lampshade" and "linen" and says:
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify? --
This images conjures up the sort of suspense from a horror movie like The Mummy, in which one wonders, "What's under all those bandages, anyway?"
She goes on with the metaphor of "unwrapping:"
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot --
The big strip tease.
Gentleman, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
Here, she creates the idea that the resurrected body is part of a sideshow or carnival, and people have paid to see the "freak" be unwrapped and revealed.
So, Plath, using the metaphor of a burial shroud, reminiscent of the Biblical reviving of Lazarus, creates an image of her identity as being connected to the external, the skin-deep. This is contrasted with the horror to be found when this identity is unwrapped to reveal the "real" identity beneath.
I edited out the second question that you asked about relating the poem to themes of Auschwitz and Daddy, since you must submit only one question at a time. For more information on these themes, please follow the link below for further analysis of the poem, or submit a new question to the Lady Lazarus Group.
What are some discussion points on Plath's "Lady Lazarus?"
I think two discussion points emerging from Plath's "Lady Lazarus" would be its use of Holocaust imagery and its display of cruelty.
One of the poem's most dominant features is its use of the Holocaust. The imagery of the speaker's skin as a "bright Nazi lampshade" or her face as "fine Jew linen" are early examples of this in the poem. The linking between death and the Holocaust is a vital part of the poem. It might be a good discussion point to explore how the context of the Holocaust helps to enhance the poem's meaning. Discussion around this point could explore how Plath is trying to connect the historical experience of the Holocaust to the person who is enduring psychological struggle. The Holocaust is a significant element to the poem and a discussion about it could reveal unique elements to both the time period and Plath's use of it.
Part of the discussion regarding the Holocaust extends into the poem's understanding of cruelty. Plath brings out some very distinct examples of how human beings are cruel to one another. From the "peanut crunching crowd" to the "poke and stir" that accompanies the speaker at the end of the poem, barbaric behavior is a significant aspect in the poem. A discussion on this point could be whether this pain is deliberate or unintentional. There could also be examination as to whether this cruelty is from other people or from the speaker's own sense of self. When she says, "dying is an art" that she does "well," is this an example from external cruelty or from within? This is another discussion that emerges out of "Lady Lazarus."
What is "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath about?
This poem has a theme of resurrection, of rising from the dead, and of the spectacle that such an occurrence is in one's life and the life of those who witness such an event. Whether this "resurrection" is literal or figurative, Plath discusses how she the character in the poem has done it 3 times in her life, and how she manages to do it every decade (she mentions that she is "only thirty" in her poem). She writes the poem as a sort of female Lazarus (Lazarus was a man who Christ raised from the dead in the Bible), and in the poem describes the physical, very real ugliness of the corpse coming back to life. She mentions "worms," "eyepits," and "sour breath" as part of the dead body, and mentions a rather circus-like atmosphere as people come to gawk and gaze at the creepy and surreal phenomenon.
She also has a theme of potential female anger against male domination; she describes Germanesque dominating males who want to profit from her, but that she will not let them. She will disappear, leaving only "a cake of soap, a wedding ring, a gold filling" so that they cannot manipulate her and use her for their ends. In all, it is a poem of female empowerment, and also of a unique spectacle that people take a rather morbid curiosity in. Given her attempted suicides in her lifetime, these thoughts could be autobiographical, or could simply be a unique way to express sentiments about life, death, males and females.
Enotes also has some really great commentary and discussion of the poem; I included a link below. I hope that these thoughts help a bit to get you started on the poem's meaning. Good luck!
What are the major themes in Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus"?
One of the major differences between a post-graduate and an undergraduate level essay is that in graduate school your work needs to reflect knowledge of the major critical approaches to your subject. Your first step, therefore, after reading the poem carefully, is to search the MLA International Bibliography (available on your school's library website) for recent scholarship about Plath.
Because of the intensely personal nature of Lady Lazarus, and Plath's own psychological history (as documented in her novel "the Bell Jar", Plath is often the subject of psychological (both Freudian and Lacanian) or feminist/gender criticism. The strong evocations of the Nazi also opens fruitful possibilities for linking Plath to the burgeoning field of Holocaust Studies, especially from the point of view of reading facism and its erasure of the other as congruent with patriarchy's erasure of the feminine (Kristeva might be useful here).
Another area to explore is the relationship of Lazarus, a character in the New Testament who is raised from the dead, with both Nazi oppressors and Jewish victims. What is the function of Christian iconography in the poem?
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