This is an essay I had to write in a class on a favorite poem of mine called
Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath. Here's the poem in case you've never read it. Below the poem will be my paper.
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap my hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart----
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus,” A Powerful Reformation
Suicide is the act of taking one’s own life, a choice a person makes to end his or her perceived suffering. When someone makes a decision to end his or her life, it is natural for people to assume the responsibility of preventing that act. However, everyone has a right to make personal choices, regardless of whether society deems it appropriate or not. No one should be forced to forfeit the right to choose. Whether suicide is right or wrong is not important, nor is that the focus of my discussion; however, I want to clarify that suicide is a choice of the one attempting it. Suicidal attempts fail and leave the speaker in Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” powerless against her enemies, giving her the desire to break the cycle of failure, to claim control over her own choices and the strength to thwart the actions of her so-called rescuers by transforming into a more powerful being.
It is made apparent that the speaker is miserable because of the references to the Holocaust. She compares her “skin” to a “Nazi lampshade,” her “right foot/A paperweight,” and her face “a featureless, fine/Jew linen” (5-8). Plath lived during World War II and the Holocaust, so she uses these symbols as a way to exemplify the torture the speaker feels by comparing it to the pain Holocaust victims underwent. Plath also uses the German language as a symbol of the anger the speaker feels toward her so-called rescuers. Almost immediately after hearing mention of a Nazi, I think about the torture that political entity put the Jews and other minority groups through. Plath does an excellent job of creating that comparison for her readers to relate to the speaker’s anguish. Plath even goes as far as using the German language to title God and Satan, “Herr God, Herr Lucifer/Beware/Beware” (79). This form of address is a way to show the speaker’s anger toward them for allowing her so-called saviors to succeed in saving her from herself. It is universally accepted that through God we live or die, so Plath uses Him as a reference to symbolize His interference into the speaker’s attempts at suicide, as well as her other so-called rescuers.
The speaker says that she is about to attempt her third suicide. She expresses her longing for the grave.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman. (16-19)
She thinks she’ll be happier in the grave than living a life that makes her miserable. She even compares herself to a cat, saying, “And like the cat I have nine times to die” (21). I think Plath uses that symbol to evoke a hint of humor that the speaker thinks, like the proverbial cat, that it may take “nine times” for the cycle to end before she can accomplish her will to die (21). The speaker sees her attempts as a waste, “What a trash/To annihilate each decade,” because “Herr Doktor” keeps bringing her back to “the same place” to have to start over, to live her miserable life once again (23-24, 53, 65).
The first two times, people who see it as their duty to sustain life rather than letting it go bring her back to resume that life that she obviously finds so unbearable. These self-appointed saviors cause her to relinquish the control she thought she had of her own life and her choice to die.
It’s the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out. (51-56)
The speaker expresses frustration that she has to continue living the same life. What others perceive as “’A miracle,’” she sees as regrettable, a confirmation that her attempt was unsuccessful.
The speaker feels as if she is an experimental dummy. The doctors keep bringing her back to life to test their skills, and the speaker is exasperated. It is starting to become an expensive experiment for her with, I would assume, all those doctor bills piling up, so she feels that she should start charging them if they want to continue to stifle her efforts. She states, “And there is a charge, a very large charge/For a word or a touch/Or a bit of blood” (61-63). She is sick and tired of being poked and prodded and wants to be left alone.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek. (67-70)
She plays God in trying to end her life, and her rescuers play God in trying to resurrect it. Their purposes collide, allowing the vicious cycle that she bemoans to continue.
The speaker begins to gain power when she starts to believe that dying is something she does “exceptionally well” (45). It is as if she no longer does it to remove herself from her torturous life, but rather to turn it around to use it against those who keep saving her when she doesn’t want to be saved.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call. (43-48)
She explains that most of the reasons she attempts suicide are to end the torture. However, at this point in the poem, she does it to feel “real,” and to break away from the cycle of failed attempts at something she obviously cannot attain (47). I see the speaker beginning to think that dying has become a power she has that may be something she is meant to do. A calling is usually referred to as something having to do with those close to God who are called to serve Him. It is not necessarily a call from God; however, it could be a call to power. She feels she can no longer make it through phase after phase of being brought back again and again, so she must find a way to rise above it.
Finally, her third attempt completes her suicide; however, rather than dying, she becomes a phoenix. “Out of the ash/I rise with my red hair/And I eat men like air” (82-84). A phoenix is a mythical bird that burns itself on a funeral pyre, rises from its ashes in the freshness of youth, and lives through another cycle of life. The speaker is no longer under the control of “Herr Doktor” or “Herr enemy,” and cannot be their experiment anymore (65, 66). She is a powerful being that burns away the flesh and bones to start over fresh again. Without the flesh and bones, there is nothing to analyze nor to “poke and stir” (74). She has been renewed after suffering through a power struggle to gain control over her life. She has broken from the bonds that tied her down and can now breathe new life, giving her the satisfaction of seeking revenge on those who held her back. This important symbol that Plath uses in having the speaker “rise” from “out of the ash” places great detail on the transformation the speaker must go through in order to overcome the adversity keeping her from her desires (82, 83). The speaker has to first recognize what causes the never-ending torment before she can start to change it.
The failure the speaker has to undergo leads her to a powerful reformation that strengthens the weakest points that entangle her. She becomes a phoenix, a significantly powerful creature, which affords her the might to seize control over her own choices. She warns her so-called saviors to “Beware/Beware/Out of the ash/I rise with my red hair/And eat men like air” (82-84). Air sustains life, so, with her new-found strength, she consumes her enemies for her sustenance, rather than her torment. Even though she will still have to continue to cycle through life, this time it will be she who controls it.
