Student Question
What are some literary devices used in "I Am Vertical" by Sylvia Plath?
Quick answer:
In "I Am Vertical," Sylvia Plath employs literary devices such as metaphor, personification, and allusion. The poem explores the speaker's sense of detachment from nature through negative metaphors comparing herself to a tree and a flower. Personification is used to give trees and flowers the human ability to notice, and the sky the capacity for conversation. An allusion to death is present, suggesting a connection between lying down and becoming one with nature in death.
This poem is based around two central comparisons that the speaker of the poem makes between herself and then a tree and a flower. It is this sense of kinship--or the lack of it--that is explored through the poem. Note how in the first stanza, the speaker begins by stating how she is different from these two objects. The speaker says that she is "not a tree with my root in the soil" and likewise she is not "the beauty of the garden bed." The speaker, by using these negative metaphors to describe what she cannot be compared to, distances herself from these lovely and fruitful images. She is not like a tree that will "gleam into leaf," and neither is she beautiful and a sight that attracts the appreciation of others. Her desire is to have the "longevity" of the tree and the "daring" of the flower. It says...
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a lot about the speaker that seeing nature makes her aware of her deficiencies. However, it is at night when the speaker imagines lying down that she can be "useful" and have communion with these aspects of nature:
It is more natural to me, lying down. Then the sky and I are in open conversation, And I shall be useful when I lie down finally: The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.
Is this a veiled reference to death and how our dying brings us closer to nature when we become one with the earth? Lying down "finally" perhaps would indicate this. Certainly a lot of Plath's poetry uses imagery and symbolism relating to death and dying, so perhaps this is possible.
What literary devices does Sylvia Plath use in her poem "I Am Vertical"?
Plath uses a variety of devices in her poem "I Am Vertical."
To begin, here is the second stanza of the poem:
Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars, The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors. I walk among them, but none of them are noticing. Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping I must most perfectly resemble them-- Thoughts gone dim. It is more natural to me, lying down. Then the sky and I are in open conversation, And I shall be useful when I lie down finally: The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.
In the bolded statement, the "none of them" she refers to is the trees and the flowers. She gives them the human capacity to notice. This is personification. Again, she argues that the sky is able to hold a conversation, which we know is only a human capability. This likewise demonstrates personfication.
Finally, Plath makes a great reference to Death. This is called an allusion. Without directly telling us that she is talking about death, she mentions those things we associated with death, being buried, lying down, and remaining for a time long enough to have roots growing down to the body.