In the Bible, Lazarus was a dead man brought back to life by Jesus in one of his most famous miracles.

In the poem “Lady Lazarus,” we are introduced to a woman whose dangerous mood swings from the heights of joy to the very depths of despair precipitate a tragic demise. Sylvia Plath took her own life not long after writing “Lady Lazarus,” and it's abundantly clear from reading the poem that her suicidal mind resents the way in which she is constantly being resurrected by joy, which only serves to postpone her inevitable sad demise.

And yet, were it not for these resurrections, these remarkable effusions of hope and confidence, Plath would not have written “Lady Lazarus” or any of the other poems she wrote in an extraordinary outburst of creativity in the space of just one week less than a few months before her suicide.

In some respects, the comparison with Lazarus is apt in that, in terms of creativity, Plath was indeed brought back from the dead. But at the same time, there's a big difference in that, unlike Lazarus, Plath appears less than grateful for her resurrections, recognizing as she does that they do not in any way curb her irrepressible instinct to end her own life.

In "Lady Lazarus," what parallels does Plath draw, and are they appropriate?

The clearest parallel that is drawn in Sylvia Plath's poem "Lady Lazarus" is between the speaker and a Jew experiencing any number of atrocities in a Nazi contentration camp. Parts of the poem that bring home this parallel include:

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,

and references to incineration, including

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Plath sets up a similar parallel in at least one other poem, "Daddy."

Whether or not this parallel is "appropriate" is open to debate. Plath herself was emotionally tortured or troubled, so in some ways the parallels are fitting. Plath's parents were German immigrants, but they were not Jewish and, from what I recall, were pacifists who opponed the Nazis. This biographical information may make the parallel seem inappropriate.

Some people may also view the Holocaust as off-limits in a way for anyone who didn't actually experience it. I'm not one of those people, but I can understand being concerned about how the Holocaust might be trivialized.