Compare And Contrast The Way Plath Presents The Speaker’s Fears In Three

Compare And Contrast The Way Plath Presents The Speaker’s Fears In Three

Of The Poems That You Have Studied

Sylvia Plath writes poems that are thoughtful and intriguing. They

have clever and subtle suggestions that leave her poems open for

interpretation by the reader. Her poems mainly have themes with either

an odd or disturbing nature. The three poems I have chosen to compare

and contrast are; “Mirror,” “Bluebeard” and “The Arrival of The Bee

Box.”

In the three poems there are several different moods that are shown

throughout. In “Bluebeard” the speaker remains in control all the

time, she is defiant and makes her own choices in stating, “I am

sending back the key;” she is rejecting him and it is always her

option whether or not to. However throughout “Bluebeard” the speaker’s

tone remains constant and never changes unlike in “The Arrival of The

Bee Box” in which her disposition changes constantly. At the beginning

of the poem the poem begins with the speaker describing the box calmly

“I ordered this, clean wood box” this creates a pleasant image even

though it is a “box of maniacs.” The box is full of something very

dangerous. If the box were to be opened then the speaker would be

unleashing hundreds of bees and yet she describes the box as being

something pleasant instead of ominous and foreboding. Then as the poem

progresses the speaker becomes obsessed and fascinated with the box

and is unable to leave it, absorbed by the power that she possesses

over the bees. “It’s like a Roman mob,” could be referring to the fact

that the emperor in ancient Rome had complete control over the lives

of the many people and she now could similarly let all the bees, “die,

I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.”...

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...oughts in the poems, it is definitive

and final. The many stanzas allow Sylvia Plath to change the speaker’s

mood and thoughts in each stanza. This, along with the language used

which is awkward and difficult to read, has the desired effect of

reflecting her feelings of confusion. She seems to be trapped between

her feelings of obsession and fear of the box she knows she can not

open. This is similar to the myth of Pandora’s Box where the woman

knows she can’t open the box as there is danger in it and yet is

somehow strangely drawn to it

In general Sylvia Plath is successful in her endeavour to portray the

fears of others in her poems. She is very skilful at writing about

real feeling and involving her life in her poems to help incorporate

real life situations into them. And by involving her fears into the

poems this helps many people to relate to them.