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Sylvia Plath writing uses a plethora of images of horror combined with images built around beauty to incite contradictory emotions within the reader . She uses strong, thought-provoking images to etch her messages deeply on the reader’s mind. Most of her poems are essentially about her father and her thoughts and emotions enveloping her his […]

Although each of the three poems tells a unique story, they convey a common message regarding the entrapment of women in their own emotions and societal expectations. Mirror Sylvia Plath wrote the poem ‘Mirror’ during the mid-twentieth century to express her personal struggles. The poem cleverly depicts the challenges faced by women, including Plath herself. […]

The poem ‘Ozymandias’ is a Petrarchan sonnet, as can be determined from its 10-syllable lines and the change in the argument after line 8. It contains rich imagery and an element of enigma, much like the structure of ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Coleridge. The sonnet by Shelley appears to tell a story, as […]

August bank holiday by Dylan Thomas is a prose set on a beach built with an unusual metaphorical language to portrait a prose that I believe is a happy childhood memory of a family day out at the beach on an August bank holiday. He uses a very uncommon use of words and uses a […]

The poem “Blackberrying” starts of with rich sensuous description but has a depressed feeling. This is created from the very start of the poem as it begins with a very negative word, “Nobody”. The poem could be about a time when Sylvia Plath went blackberrying but I think that is about her life and her […]

“The Ballad of Billy Rose” by Leslie Norris is a thought-provoking poem where the poet reminisces about a particular incident in his childhood. Throughout the poem the poet employs a variety of poetic techniques to enhance the imagery such as rhyme, enjambement, figurative language and alliteration.The poem “The Ballad of Billy Rose” begins with the […]

A spinster, by definition, is a woman past the usual marrying age or considered unlikely to marry because she lacks the qualities men desire in their partners. One could characterize a spinster as an ‘old maid’, a woman doomed to loneliness by chance and prejudices. The girl who is the focus and protagonist of Sylvia […]

In Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, the main character Esther, a nineteen-year-old girl starting out in life, is anxious about the unknown and the possible consequences of being independent. She struggles with herself because she doesn’t have a clear sense of identity or direction. While visiting New York briefly, Esther’s boss asked about her […]

‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’ was written by Sylvia Plath after the end of the Second World War. The poem is about the arrival of a bee box, and the emotions that Plath has towards it, and the sounds emanating from it. The poem has a definite beginning, middle, and end, but has no […]

I am going to write about three short stories from the anthology which deals with the theme of relationship and loss; I will compare and contrast these three stories showing how the writer uses language and structure to convey these ideas. Firstly, out of the first three stories I chose, ‘Flight’ by Doris Lessing, it […]

As people grow older, they feel less confident about the matter of ageing. Fear sometimes overcomes them and with it, drives them to a feeling of frustration and hatred. There are poets that describe what they think about ageing; with or without going through such an experience.In Sylvia Plath’s poem “Mirror”, the matter of ageing […]

Sylvia Plath initially wrote ‘The Rabbit Catcher’ in 1962. It detailed the events of a daytrip to the country and her feelings towards some rabbit traps she found. The subtext of the poem was that of the marital strife she was going through with her husband Ted Hughes. Ted Hughes wrote a series of poems […]

People go through a vast range of events as they travel through life and face various obstacles. These obstacles differ from person to person and can sometimes seem impossible to surmount. Society is one of the prevailing sources of these obstacles and it occasionally can put overwhelming pressures on a person’s soul and can be […]

In my essay I aim to compare the similarities and state the differences between two poems, Sylvia Plath’s, ‘Daddy’ and Emily Dickinson’s, ‘I Felt a Funeral in my Brain.’ These two poems deal with intense emotions and extreme cases of anger from the writer’s own real-life experiences. Sylvia Plath had an extremely traumatic childhood as […]

This period in history, which was approximately between the years of 1540 and 1600, saw an explosion of literature, particularly in the genres of drama and poetry. Shakespeare, the dominant and most famous writer of this period, is regarded by many as the greatest ever writer in the English language. Although the period is recognised […]

Mirror, by Sylvia Plath is one of the best examples to show how valid, vanity is in a woman’s life. I think this is one of, if not the oldest poem from all of which we have read. For a start her name, being Sylvia is quite old-fashioned and not often heard of now, but […]

In this essay my aim is to compare the three poems ‘Blackberrying’ and ‘Mirror’ by Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes’ ‘Roe Deer’. I will mainly be focusing on the poets’ use of language and imagery in the poems. In addition to this I will discuss how they transform the ordinary into quite magical objects and […]

A sonnet is a type of poem, which poets often use to express their feelings. The themes of most sonnets are subjects such as war and death or love and happiness. Sonnets are useful because the poet can tell the reader what they want to say in just fourteen short lines.The person who wrote the […]

Sylvia Plath effectively communicates the bitterness and frustration that arose from her father’s traumatic death through powerful language. Otto Plath, Sylvia’s father, was a German immigrant who taught biology and German at Boston University. Sylvia longed for her father’s attention since the birth of her younger brother Warren. Despite being an excellent student and winning […]

The poem “Morning Song” was written by the poet Sylvia Plath. Based around the struggles of this young mother the poem shows not only the events that took place within her first few weeks of motherhood but the feelings and emotions she goes through. Through her life this poet suffered times of depression in which […]

Sylvia Plath was a highly accomplished writer, as well as a wife and mother of two, until she passed away in 1963. Plath’s life began with her birth in Boston, Massachusetts on October 27, 1932. Sadly, her life ended on February 11, 1963 after her second suicide attempt. Despite this tragedy, Plath’s impact continues through […]

The two sonnets I am comparing, Sonnet LX by Williams Shakespeare, and Ozymandias, by Percy Shelley. I am going to compare the way both deal with the themes of transience and immortality through the sonnet form, the arguments and ideas expressed and the way the writers use imagery, language and tone to make their point. […]