Draft of Poem Essay

Analysis of Lady Lazarus

Lady Lazarus is a poem that seems to confuse many readers the first go around of reading it. Since there are so many forms of imagery in this poem, one may read a line, but then become confused when they read the next. So then, you must re-read it again and again, at least 4 or 5 times should do it, to fully comprehend and get a clear image of what’s being said. Everyone will have their own interpretation of the images they see, so here’s what I found in reading this poem 4 to 5 times.

In the fourth and fifth line, it says, “A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade” (Plath, 4-5). By first glance, one may see that the person in this poem may have been Jewish and locked away in a Nazi concentration camp. But then to move onto stanza nine, it says, “What million filaments, The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see” (Plath, 25-27). This may confuse readers because then one might think that the lady is not in a concentration camp but in a circus show and is known as the freak of the show. And then throughout the rest of the poem, your mind is stuck on the circus act and how this might outrage the lady and inflict on her emotions that are being denied the right to show themselves and speak up. The lady wants to die and let that be the end of her nightmare, but “they” bring her back and put her back on display for all to see.

She calls herself, “The big strip tease” (Plath, 29). As she is being put on display against her will. Then what also makes it seem like a circus show are these next couple of lines, “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” (Plath, 58-63). Saying that there is a charge for these items brings forth even stronger within my mind the image of a warped and twisted circus with this lady being the main attraction. What also gets me with these two stanzas are that I picture the lady being wrapped head to toe in bandages sort mummy like if you will. To have slits for eyes, like a cats, and have scars old and new all over her body that you would see where bandages are falling apart at certain spots on her body. All in all, a form of monster that’s still human in some sense but plays the role of being half dead and half alive.

This poem seems like it would fit perfectly well, in the sense of imagery and wording that is, in a Stephen King novel. He is known for turning something that could be completely off putting to most, into something even more gruesome but in a way where it’s elegant; if that makes any sense at all. I don’t mean to say that it sounds pleasing to the ears, but that it’s not as gory, well for this poem anyways. There is a part of this poem that I do not understand and feel that it’s a bit out of place in this poem because it throws different images into the reader’s mind. These lines are the following, “A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling” (Plath, 76-78). It doesn’t seem to fit with the circus act theme that plays throughout the poem and then the images just still onto single objects, the ring, a cake made of soap and a gold filling. Where does this apply to the poem? I have no clue and it certainly throws me off whenever I go back and re-read it again.
Since I have talked much about imagery, let’s also talk about something that is underlined throughout this poem but one would not see it unless they read close enough. In some form, there is dialogue. Now of course, there are no quotations telling us that a person is indeed speaking, but this entire poem is of one lady, telling us what is happening. So in fact, the entire poem is one set of dialogue! Though in this case, it would be called a soliloquy since it is only one person speaking and it’s really to her-self that she is saying all this to. The readers are more of like an outside audience looking in at her “life”. A line that really captures this meaning of dialogue is, “And I am a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die” (Plath, 19-21). She is not only giving a slight description of herself, but is also showing the monstrous side of her by comparing herself to a cat with nine lives.

She also mentions other “monstrous” figures such as Lucifier, God, Doktor and Enemy. Doktor could very well mean the person or person’s that keep bringing her back to life and how she mentions Lucifier and God because in truth since she has been brought back from the dead, she can neither go to heaven nor hell. And her Enemy are all of the above plus the people that come to see her as the freak show. She considers them all enemies, which is why at the ending, it says, “Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air” (Plath, 82-84). This stanza here brings together just how much anger and animosity she has built up and makes one wonder if next time she is brought back from the dead, will she release hell onto the people that do so? I hope so would anyways.

Though I speak about dialogue, imagery, I believe, is the most important thing that this poem provides. With such vivid details and words that bring to the fore front of the mind images in which you have either seen before or never thought you would see in your lifetime or ever thought existed. Who of our generation would know what a “Nazi lampshade” looks like or “a right foot as a paper weight”? It’s gruesome but our minds let the information sink in and try to create what it might look like, and the outcomes will always be different for each person since each person sees things differently.

In the end though, this poem requires quite a bit of thorough reading and repetition of certain lines because you may read it once and see something but then read it again and see something completely different. As for me, this poem brought a macabre circus to mind with Lady Lazarus as its main attraction and this was done with all of the lines of imagery and descriptive words throughout the poem.


Works Cited
Plath, Sylvia Lady Lazarus, from Collected Poems, Harper Collins Publisher, 1960.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178961