The poem's deeper importance and meaning are revealed by Plath's use of figurative language, such as symbolism. Plath employs symbolism in stanza 8 to suggest that she has some ability to foretell the future and the fate of individuals. My gypsy ancestress and my strange fate, she says. She elaborates on this further by mentioning the Taroc bag she always had with her. (38-39). Once more in stanza 10, Plath refers to her father as swastika, an allusion to the Indian sign that the Nazis used. The swastika is enormous to the extent that it blacks out the whole sky (46-47). The symbolism here references the war air raids committed by Luftwaffe who bombed many England cities turning the entire sky black.
Still, on the same stanza lines 48-50, the symbolic use of brutes in boots and dominant despotic males about women attraction shows how female victims blindly end up in the snares of their predators. In the stanza 15, Plath symbolizes her father as a vampire to describe his predatory character (72). She shifts her father’s character from that of a living Nazi to a dead vampire, “the vampire who said he was you…. drank my blood” (73-74). Here, Plath out rightly refers to her father as a vampire to vividly depict the pain in her relationship. As the poem comes to an end in stanza 15 line 71, Plath depicts a symbolic scene of the murder of the vampire father, and this on a palpable level represents her struggle to overcome the haunting influence of her dead father who passed away when she was just ten years old.
Explication of Louise Brogan’s “Medusa”
The poem narrated the recollection of Medusa’s sad plight after she was severely punished with her beauty being tarnished to a serpentine hair in that whoever came into contact with her eyes would be turned to rock. In the first stanza, the narrator arrives at Medusa’s house as it seems was searching for her. In the second stanza, the persona uses the term “when ” and this depicts that her sight was not a surprise. In the same stanza, the persona juxtapositions the cave of trees and the sheer sky, and still, uses paradox where she says “everything moved” and still goes ahead to say “a bell hung ready to strike” (3). Line 4 is still a paradox of the sun and reflection. In the second stanza where the persona sees Medusa, it is prolonged to emphasize its shift and significance of Medusa’s sight. There is juxtaposition where Medusa is given two descriptions of bare eyes implying she was lifeless (5) yet still her hair hissed (6).
Line 7 is a paradox as Medusa was held up the window and at the same time could be seen through the door. In stanza 2, the tone of the poem takes a different scary turn. Time is at a standstill in stanzas 3, 4 and 5. The persona, in verse 3, is turned to stone as she says “this is a dead scene forever now” (11), and still uses juxtaposition for lines 12 and 13. Time stops in stanza four as the persona, in juxtaposition, says that water will and will not fall (14), and also paradoxically quotes that tipped bell will no longer ring (15). In the last stanza, the persona accepts their death (19) by saying that the dust lifts in the wind (20) and never seems to drift away (21). The tone of the poem is natural and light at the beginning but later shifts to somber one mixed with death and time. It is ironical that in spite Medusa being dead she still affects the living, and is still used to symbolize feminine energy in life and art. The poet also uses spondees like “facing” and “everything” to an emphasis on words thus depicting an irregular rhythm.
Work Cited
"Daddy by Sylvia Plath." Poetry Foundation, 2017, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2.
"Medusa by Louise Bogan." Poetry Foundation, 2017, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43690/medusa-56d2227e48f6e.
