Plath’s and Sexton Poems Led to the Suicide

In Sexton and Plath poems images of death saturate their lives. For example, in “housewife' which is a poem focusing on sexton's life, her experience in mental hospital reflects how she spends eight hours pretending to be dead, while in the psychiatrist office. Likewise in Plath's poems 'Lady Lazarus” when she recovers after being hospitalized for an extended period. She tells her story in this poem and what she went through.These poets attempted to terminate their lives by their own hands.

I feel the authors are deeply haunted by their lives and what they have gone through hence making decisions to terminate their lives. The language used in the poem represents a lot of rhetoric of suicide, as we analyze this rhetoric we come across expression, which shows how deeply these women are hurt within and are severely isolated by the society. They have transferred their secluded feelings of agony, to the public. Image of death is seen in poems like in Plath “Lady Lazarus” which resembles their death by suicide. Their life is full of sufferings and is well reflected in their poems.

Throughout sextons poem “her kind” sextons suffering is reflected, this shows what she went through from psychological torture to memories of attempted suicide. She uses 'I' in the poem which shows what she has gone through. This poem discusses sexton life, as she has been through hard times, she had to overcome all odds in life despite the challenges she comes across. She has a lot of painful memories because of what she has been through, and she was raped when she was young and also had a permanent mental illness which made her be admitted. Even after her marriage, all these things follow her, and she is in severe depression and trauma.

In Plath’s life, it is full of agony she has gone through hard and frustrating, moments in her life which made her commit suicide. The memories of her father who died when she was only eight and her husband abandoning her to be with another woman brought depression to her. Near the end of the poem, a metaphor is used reflecting of her husband being the vampire of her dead dad who was send to torment her emerges. Plath lives a frustrating life which makes her commit suicide at the age of thirty. The use of the words ‘'oo'' in the poem shows the how incomplete she is through longing and mourning of her father. Psychological torture led to the death of Plath, after her father passes away she became lonely.

To conclude the Plath's and Sexton poems reveals a high level of agony, this makes them commit suicide. They have gone through a lot of hard times with life full of depression. Sextons were married at nineteen and sexually abused when she was a young girl, this thing torments her throughout her life. Plath life is compromised after her father death all these things make her these things make her commit suicide.

Cite this page