Plath Poems- five passages

April 18

“and in a few fatal yards of grass
in a few spaces of sky and treetops

a future was lost yesterday
as easily and irretrievably
as a tennis ball at twilight”

“April 18” by Plath, much like her other works, does not end hopefully. Plath’s concept of memory and the future is pessimistic. “a future was lost yesterday” negatively implies that the future can be lost, overcome easily by the past. For the future to easily become “irretrievable” represents a perspective with no hope, or lost hope, on life. Lost hope for the future is a direct result of Esther’s depression in The Bell Jar. Esther’s depression does not allow her to perceive a life of meaning and delight.

The Dead

“They loll forever in colossal sleep;
Nor can God's stern, shocked angels cry them up
From their fond, final, infamous decay”.

This poem reveals insight to Plath’s perception of death; she cynically describes the deceased as in a “final, infamous decay”. Plath’s use of words with negative connotations sets the dismal tone of this poem. Sylvia Plath’s own depression shed a dark, ominous tone over most of her works, including “The Dead”. Plath suggests that even “God’s stern, shocked angels [cannot] cry them up”. This explains that death is irreversible, even in God’s hands. This is possibly the reason for Plath’s suicide later in life, and Esther’s suicide in The Bell Jar.

The Applicant

“First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch”

Plath’s title, “The Applicant”, implies that the poem is about a candidate, or aspirant for something. The first line in the stanza starts with the applicant being questioned about the kind of person they are. By asking are you “our sort of person” entails that the applicant is assumed of being an outsider. The next three lines describe the meaning of “our sort of person” as a superficial person with a false body. In The Bell Jar, Esther as well feels like the outsider compared to everyone around her. She is surrounded by a false lifestyle where everyone and everything appears fake.

The Applicant

“Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand”

The applicant is asked for proof of their falseness, in order to prove likeness to their “sort of person”. Throughout The Bell Jar, Esther repeatedly tries to fit in to the lifestyle she is assumed to want to live. Having to become someone else in order to fit in with society’s model for women ignited Esther’s depression. The next line shows that if the applicant cannot prove that they are one of them, then the applicant will not be provided for. In The Bell Jar, Esther is an unwilling applicant, if she doesn’t conform to the typical American woman, she won’t be granted with the respect of other women. Instead of being comforted, the applicant is told to stop crying. The words “Empty? Empty” confirm the feeling of meaninglessness, The applicant is then presented with help to fill the emptiness by being offered a hand.

Doomsday

"Too late to ask if end was worth the means,
Too late to calculate the toppling stock:
The idiot bird leaps out and drunken leans,
The hour is crowed in lunatic thirteens".

In “Doomsday” Plath uses repetition as a rhetorical device. The lines “The idiot bird leaps out and drunken leans” and “The hour is crowed in lunatic thirteens” is repeated multiple times throughout. Plath uses repetition as a style to create a fluid poem. “Too late to ask if end was worth the means” implies that life is worthless because immortality is unattainable. Plath’s own depression manipulates her perception of living, making life appear meaningless in her writing. Plath as well creates the protagonist, Esther, in The Bell Jar, to have severe depression, like her own, that alters her consciousness of a meaningful life.