Child-Sylvia Plath

Child-Sylvia Plath

1. Inability to create a flawed world for her children

   • She wishes the best for her child but she doesn't know how this can be achieved in the world she personally knows
     • "...this troublous/ Wringing of hands, this dark/ Ceiling without a star

2. Awareness of the innocence and perfection of children

   • "Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing"
     • Admires the beauty of her child's eye that is pure and untainted-something perfect
   • She calls her child a "Little/Stalk without wrinkle"

3. Wants to expose her children to all that is good and special

   • "I want to fill it with colour and ducks/Like the zoo of the new/ whose names you meditate"

4. Plath has a void within herself that nothing, not even her children could fill

   • The "dark ceiling without a star" is Plath's perception of the world, confusing, dark, and ultimately hopeless
     • suffering with depression, mental anguish
     • Metaphor of the way poet views her own life

5. Describes the child meditating upon new words,those animals and exotic flowers in a book

   • "April snowdrop, Indian pipe"

6. Wants to present her child with images that are fun and colourful

   • "I want to fill it with colour and ducks" and "grand classical images"

7. Written 2 weeks before she took her own life

   • Carefully phrased, exact
     • unrhymed

8. Love is evident by mother

9. humour and inventiveness in the wishes expressed by the poet