The whole clown and skull thing confused me a little bit here. Does that mean the clown is the grave digger? And what was the significance of the skulls? To show that all people die, because just at this point in the play I think most of us have already figured that out? I am confused as to why Laertes puts up a fight when Hamlet proclaims his love for Ohpelia, does he think Hamletis mocking her? Well after that, the request for a duel (fencing, no one is meantto die) is sent to Hamlet. At this point he readily accepts and sends word that he will come down immediately. I am not sure why he is so naive about this whole thing, as it was Laertes that he is to duel. And as if he had forgotten, Laertes had started a fight with him earlier that same day, does Hamlet really think Laertes is going to be honest and not have any tricks up his sleeve? So the duel starts and the King makes some really obscure rules that Hamlet goes along with without a bat of an eyelash. So Laertes wounds Hamlet, then their swords get switched so Hamlet wounds Laertes, then Queen Gertrude drinks the poison and drops dead, so Hamlet kills Claudius. Goodness, how melodramatic. Then again how else would one of Shakespeare’s plays end…? But then of course (I forgot to mention this for Act IV), and how bad timing this is, young Fortinbras turns up demanding his land back. Yet everyone is dead but Horatio, and Fortinbras is appalled by the mass of dead bodies of none other but the entire royal family, so he orders Prince Hamlet to be carried away as a fallen soldier would, with pride and dignity. I thought the falling action was really good, but to be honest I thought the very end was a bit weak.

So Hamlet is shipped off to England because he is crazy, as apparently the English are themselves. Hamlet doesn’t put up much of a direct fight which I am surprised about. Hamlet does not seem to feel sorry at all though about murdering his true loves father, well I guess this means he won’t have to impress Polonius anymore. He speaks of how Polonius is now ‘dust’ which is kind of weird as he doesn’t mention until later on in the same act where the body actually is. Poor Polonius is put in a haphazardly made grave without any funeral or ceremony. I am not even sure if his death is announced or told to his daughter Ophelia or if she only found out because she saw his headstone in the graveyard. That seems rather inhuman and cold. Then Laertes returns from France and there is talk of him becoming King. However, Laertes is in such a state of distress about his fathers death that King Claudius has to ‘calm’ him down. Then Claudius plots to kill Hamlet through Laertes in means of a duel or in case that fails by poison. I understand that Laertes is shaken up about his fathers murder, but him and Hamlet used to be close friends. So even though he knows it was an accident, I don’t see why Hamlet has to be avenged in death. It seems as though Laertes doesn’t really even think about what he is agreeing to he is just King Claudius’ puppet. And of course poor Ophelia, I think she committed suicide even if the church doesn’t think so. I just think there is a limit on how much one can handle, I mean her lover killed her father, that is pretty dreadful.

I feel rather sorry for Ophelia in this act. She is being manipulated and tossed around by her overbearing father, and then as Hamlet has to uphold his act of insanity, by him too. Hamlet outright denies that he ever loved her, and although she first returned his poems and love letters to him, I still think that this was a bit much just to find out if Claudius really did the late King Hamlet. I can’t understand how during the play the rest of the audience does not put two and two together to figure out that the play is about King Claudius. I mean, he is sitting up there riddled with guilt, a guilty look on his face and practically writhing in his seat. Then next to him is Queen Gertrude who is sitting there disgraced and shameful and almost hiding her face in her hands. As for Hamlet, he makes a loud and rude speech as to how the play must be showing the audience something. I mean its not that hard to put the clues together. Later on, I think Hamlet’s admittance, of why he was acting so insane, to his mother is quite noble of him. Despite the fact that he guilts his mother into a state of near madness herself. But I respect that Queen Gertrude holds her composure and does not let on to the King that she knows about his wicked deeds. I was rather shocked though, when Hamlet stabs and ends up killing Polonius through the tapestry. It was a rather foolish move on Polonius’ part to be spying on Hamlet though I suppose due to how rash he had lately been acting. But I can’t believe that Hamlet didn’t really feel that remorseful as he turns and drags the body away as if it were roadkill.

I was a little more uncertain whilst reading this Act than the previous as to what was going on. First off Polonius asks Reynaldo, who I am assuming to be a servant, to what it seems spy on Laertes in France to make sure he is not making a fool of himself. Then Hamlet comes in raving about one thing or another, and Polonius thinks he is obviously mad with lust for Ophelia, who he has prohibited from seeing. So Polonius feels it is his duty to inform the King, as Hamlet is now his step son. So of course the King and Queen are very worried about Hamlet, even though he is only perfectly enraged at the King for murdering his father. I wonder if Hamlet will have the guts to avenge his father by killing Claudius in return or if the secret will escape until the King begins to realize he has been found out? Then there is word from Norway which says that young Fortinbras has been stopped by the “sick, grieved and impotent” old Fortinbras. Then Hamlet writes a play about his late father, hoping to coax out a confession from King Claudius about the King’s murder, yet only Hamlet and Claudius know that he has been murdered, as the rest of Denmark have been told he has been bitten by a snake. I have no idea if why he thinks this would work but I guess he thinks that it will. We will see. The play so far makes me wonder if Queen Gertrude was unfaithful before the King’s murder? and if she was, did she play a role in his murder?

When I look back on this Act I just wonder how Queen Gertrude can stomach her recent marriage to her brother-in-law with such lack of guilt. I feel so sorry for poor Hamlet who seems to be chastised by his mother and new step father for wanting to grieve over his late father. I mean, what kind of sane woman would make her son feel guilty for being upset about his father’s death. I was actually really surprised that I understood this entire act, and felt like I was fully aware of what was going on before we even watched the movie. I love how down to earth Hamlet is, as he calls Horatio and Marcellus “friend” instead of addressing them as lessers. Plus it helps that he also plays Guildroy Lockhart in the 2nd Harry Potter. I think it is incredibly amusing how excited Hamlet gets when he learns that his father’s ghost has been sighted by the watch guards. Did people really believe in the supernatural in Shakespeare’s time or is it just fiction and good entertainment? Laertes is really quite annoying, despite how smart and noble and whatever else he is claimed to be. I completely agree with Ophelia when she jokes, even though she is quite serious, that he should “practice what he preaches”. Polonius comes across as a chauvinistic old man whose double standards for his son and daughter trap Ophelia into always obeying him when Laertes can run ramped in France, doing whatever he pleases. I feel sorry for Ophelia and how she must always give in to the men that control her life, namely her father and Hamlet.

The Race

 

The encroaching moss upon my chest

Makes hard to breathe

The feeble air

With its frosted glare

Into my soul

I am left with doubts of the path I traverse

 

With cumbersome loads upon my back

Only a faint glimmer ahead

That shines like the reflection of the moon

In a glassy pond

Fragile and few

For my courage is waning

And my breath grows slim

As I lumber up that hill

That bores into me a mark of pain

Then down from the top

A slippery stumble

 

I have struggled for much time

Now my end is near,

The relief in conclusion

Does little to lessen the ache

Though it is all over

 

I decided to use the style of Sylvia Plath to write a poem about a cross-country race. I do not mention words relating to a race within the poem; therefore, one must look at the title to discover the poem’s subject. I took this idea from Sylvia Plath herself, specifically from her poem “Mushrooms”. The subject of this poem would be indistinguishable unless one looked at the title. The poem is about the fight for women’s rights that was emerging at that time, yet Plath uses heavy and metaphorical language, which I have attempted to imitate, to describe her subject matter.

 

 

 

 

 

Review:

 

I really enjoyed using blogging instead of writing a full-fledged research paper this semester. I found it easy to adapt to the program and found the blogosphere accessible and easy to use. I really liked the different post assignments. This seemed to break up and even lessen the preparatory work. I also found that this gave me more direction than the research paper did, as with that I had no idea where to start. I appreciated the quick feedback you gave us with your comments, which made me feel more confident that I was moving in the right direction with my blog. Overall, I felt like I learnt a lot about my poet and about the Internet and its different functions.

 

URL’s:

 

1.    http://kathleenegr1.edublogs.org/2009/03/11/an-introduction-to-anne-sexton/#comments

2.  http://blaglash.com/2009/03/05/some-thoughts-about-sylvia-plath/#comment-721 

3.   http://poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/02/women_poets_mentorship_1.html

4.  http://kathleenegr1.edublogs.org/2009/03/19/the-truth-the-dead-know/#comment-3

 

 

P.s. I used the alias of “Daisy” to post my comments under.

 

 

 

Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton have both been classified as confessional poets. However, not only do these two women share similarities within their work, but also in their lifetimes. The paths of these two women crossed for the first time in Boston when Plath heard Sexton was

 

“auditing a poetry workshop at Boston University taught by Robert Lowell and Plath ‘kind of followed me [Sexton] in, joined me there’” (Trinidad).

 

In reference to Plath and her raw talent for writing, Sexton tells us:

 

“Something told me to bet on her but I never asked it why [although] I never guessed that she had it all in her” (Trinidad).

 

Although both women grew up in Wellesley, Massachusetts, they did not meet for the first time until they were adults and both had started writing professionally.

 

Sexton and Plath would meet in Boston, and soon began to have a close relationship.

 

They would

 

“discuss, ‘like moths to an electric light bulb,’ their passionate flirtation with death” (Trinidad).

 

Plath and Sexton seem to have a deep connection, maybe founded by their obsession by death and the fact that at that time, both women were breaking the boundaries of conventional poetry. As confessional poets, they wrote about death, sexuality and their deep fears and desires. They both also struggled with their weakness and vulnerability in a male dominated society. Both women wrote to relieve themselves from their growing inner anxiety and troubles, and additionally, Plath and Sexton shared the fact that they both had diagnosed emotional and mental problems that led to suicidal thoughts and mental lapses and breakdowns. These two poets seemed to have delved not only into their own souls but also partially into the soul of the other. It is evident in their written work how similar their ideologies were.

 

SEXTON:

   ... the brown mole

  [on] my right cheek: a spot of danger

  where a bewitched worm ate its way through [my] soul

  in search of beauty.

PLATH:

   Soon, soon the flesh

  The grave cave ate will be

  At home on me

  They had to call and call

  And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

SEXTON:

   The snow has quietness in it

 

PLATH:

   The snow has no voice (Trinidad).

 

Yet Anne Sexton was strongly influence by Plath just as Plath was influence by Sexton. After Plath committed suicide, Anne Sexton wrote two poems that reflected her emotions about her grief and also her longing to follow Plath’s same pathway. Anne Sexton committed suicide by gas, as did Plath, on October 4^th 1974, just over a decade after Sylvia Plath took her own life.

 

Sylvia’s Death

for Sylvia Plath (by Anne Sexton)

O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,

 

with two children, two meteors
wandering loose in a tiny playroom,

 

with your mouth into the sheet,
into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer,

 

(Sylvia, Sylvia
where did you go
after you wrote me
from Devonshire
about rasing potatoes
and keeping bees?)

 

what did you stand by,
just how did you lie down into?

 

Thief –
how did you crawl into,

crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,

 

the death we said we both outgrew,
the one we wore on our skinny breasts,

 

the one we talked of so often each time
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston,

 

the death that talked of analysts and cures,
the death that talked like brides with plots,

 

the death we drank to,
the motives and the quiet deed?

 

(In Boston
the dying
ride in cabs,
yes death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)

 

O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drummer
who beat on our eyes with an old story,

 

how we wanted to let him come
like a sadist or a New York fairy

 

to do his job,
a necessity, a window in a wall or a crib,

 

and since that time he waited
under our heart, our cupboard,

 

and I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides

 

and I know at the news of your death
a terrible taste for it, like salt,

 

(And me,
me too.
And now, Sylvia,
you again
with death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)

 

And I say only
with my arms stretched out into that stone place,

 

what is your death
but an old belonging,

 

a mole that fell out
of one of your poems?

 

(O friend,
while the moon’s bad,
and the king’s gone,
and the queen’s at her wit’s end
the bar fly ought to sing!)

 

O tiny mother,
you too!
O funny duchess!
O blonde thing!

February 17, 1963

Trinidad, David. ”‘Two sweet ladies’: Sexton and Plath’s friendship and mutual influence.” The American Poetry Review 35.6 (Nov-Dec 2006): 21(9). Academic OneFile. Gale. Library of Michigan. 25 Mar. 2009 
<http://0-find.galegroup.com.elibrary.mel.org/itx/start.do?prodId=AONE>.

Sylvia Plath was greatly influenced by the work of Emily Dickinson. Alike herself, Dickinson also struggled with the dominance of the male in society, and both women attempt to fight with this issue in their work. Both female poets feel threatened by the dominance of the male in society, thereby, they use their poetry as a way to express and destroy the oppressive male even if this is not, in fact, a reality.

 

“External power, perceived as masculine, threatens this woman poet with a disruptive presence, an alien pressure that could destroy rather than edify the self. In the case of masculinized power, Dickinson [as does Plath] becomes aggressive and takes revenge against the adversarial composite of father/God/lover/precursor who has excluded her or tried to silence her. She then metaphorically kills him to control him” (Porritt).

 

Although Plath is viewed as a confessional poet, her work follows the ideology more of Dickinson than of someone such as Whitman when faced with the issue of gender power, which can be symbolized by stark nakedness. Plath, like Dickinson, believed nakedness to be a symbol of weakness, unworthiness and vulnerability, while Whitman proclaimed his nudity as a symbol of power and masculinity.

 

“While Whitman and those male poets who followed him valued nakedness as a gesture of honesty and freedom, the women poets [including Plath] who followed Dickinson seemed more inclined to present themselves as armored, covered, or concealed” (Lant).

 

Plath seems to grapple with the idea of being a confessional poet in her work itself; her poetry shows conflict between the honesty and inner workings of her mind and soul and the protective shield she was so used to wearing as a female author during the mid 1900’s.

 

“The confessional mode and its accompanying metaphors of nakedness continue to function differently for such writers as Sylvia Plath […] ‘Confessionalverse by women appears more reticent, more closed’” (Lant).

 

Dickinson also strongly adhered to a more closed and uninviting tone in her poetry than many male poets during her time. She proclaimed less, as she seemed more insecure about herself and her writing, as did Sylvia Plath. Like Dickinson, Plath was emotionally unstable, and for both women, writing seemed to enhance this characteristic.

 

Plath used her poetry as an art form to pare out her struggles in an attempt to reconcile with her mind. Yet, before her, Dickinson used poetry in a similar way. Dickinson did not publish barely any of her poems during her lifetime; it was almost as if she feared their rejection by publishing companies. However, Dickinson used poetry as an output for her fears and insecurities. Plath seems to have taken a leaf out of Dickinson’s book, as we can see in her poetry too the insecurities and reservations she felt, yet was not bold enough to voice them aloud. It almost seems as the work of these two women was never supposed to be heard. When reading the poetry of both Dickinson and Plath, it almost feels like a violation of their privacy, as if one is delving into someone’s secret journal that they wish no one to find.

 

 

Porritt, Ruth. ”Women Poets and the American Sublime.” College Literature 20.n3 (Oct 1993): 181(4). Academic OneFile. Gale. Library of Michigan. 23 Mar. 2009 
http://0-find.galegroup.com.elibrary.mel.org/itx/start.do?prodId=AONE.

 

Lant, Kathleen Margaret. ”The big strip tease: female bodies and male power in the poetry of Sylvia Plath.” Contemporary Literature 34.n4 (Winter 1993): 620(50). Academic OneFile. Gale. Library of Michigan. 23 Mar. 2009 
http://0-find.galegroup.com.elibrary.mel.org/itx/start.do?prodId=AONE.

 

 

 

“Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath
  
   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 me 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.

In “Lady Lazarus” Sylvia Plath is once again the author and the speaker. She seems to be yelling out for someone to hear her, but nobody replies. She compares herself to the biblical Lazarus who is raised from the dead by Jesus.

[She] demonstrated a “long-standing” interest in the biblical story of Lazarus that peaked after her first attempt at suicide in 1953, when she felt she “had been on the other side of life like Lazarus” (Dahlke).

Plath is dealing with the power struggle in her life between herself and the patriarchal society she lived in, Her domineering father is portrayed by ”Herr Doktor” or “the enemy”. Plath is being forced into submission in this poem by Herr Doktor, although she smugly warns him that she is also a human and more than just a “collection of parts” (Dahlke) or his “pure gold baby” (“Lady Lazarus”) when she invitingly calls him to:

“Peel off the napkin / O my enemy/ Do I terrify?” (“Lady Lazarus” 10-12).

The tone of this poem is one of ultimate defeat, although she does put up a feeble fight when she retorts to Herr Doktor at the end by saying:

“Beware

Beware.

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air” (“Lady Lazarus” 80-85).

Yet Plath only makes a half hearted attempt to secure power, because at the end she generalizes her threat to all men as opposed to directing it solely to Herr Doktor, her father.

This poem is an allegory of the biblical story of Lazarus, when Jesus resurrects him from the dead. Lazarus is celebrated upon reawakening as life to him is treasured now and after death. Yet for Plath, she seems to only value death as it seems as though life in the now is not very important to her. Her power struggle against the patriarchal system, mainly her father, leaves Plath feeling that her only escape is in death.

“Her struggle for power ends in destruction. A cruel deity imposes his power on Lady Lazarus, and she can do nothing but fall prey to his will” (Dahlke).

Dahlke, Laura Johnson. ”Plath’s Lady Lazarus.” The Explicator 60.4 (Summer 2002): 234(3). Academic OneFile. Gale. Library of Michigan. 17 Mar. 2009 
<http://0-find.galegroup.com.elibrary.mel.org/itx/start.do?prodId=AONE>.