A Herr-story “Lady Lazarus” and Her Rise from the Ash - Literature Essay Samples

The primary concern of Sylvia Plath’s poem â€Å"Lady Lazarus† is how the female speaker views her relationship with men; the emotions associated with her views of sex are equated to death, and the desire for her to die. This metaphor of death, used throughout the poem, parallels how she sees sex as an act worse than death, and that the institution of marriage is not only a prison, but for her, can be likened to a Nazi concentration camp. By analyzing each metaphorical section (the concentration camp, the mummy Lazarus, the circus, and the phoenix), and by examining literary techniques such as line enjambment and repetition, one can conclude that the speaker equated conventional marriage and relationships to a prison (or concentration camp), and when trapped by this, she would prefer to view herself as dead, rather than acknowledging any sexual acts in that marriage.Beginning in the second stanza, and continuing into the third â€Å"Bright as a Nazi lampshade, / My ri ght foot / A paperweight, / My face a featureless, fine / Jew linen† (lines 5-9) one can immediately see how she’s comparing something (that one later learns is a relationship) to the Holocaust, specifically the way the Nazis viewed the Jews as household products worth nothing more than the material possessions produced from their torture, and ultimately, death. The fact that the speaker focuses on items commonly found around the house is symbolic in the aspect that she feels trapped in household life, as a possession, where she feels tortured as well. This also sets the tone of the poem as a personal holocaust, because of the persecution she fears and experiences.The second metaphor to examine is that of Lazarus, the namesake of the poem. Like Lazarus, the speaker feels she has the power to rise from the dead. Soon, soon the flesh / The grave cave ate will be / At home on me. / And I a smiling woman. (16-20)This passage is in reference to Lazarus’s rise from th e dead emerging from the cave. The speaker uses this to show her inner strength: that when forced into a cave, paralleled to a relationship, she will emerge better than before, that this rebirth will bring an end to the tortuous time, and that she will smile outwardly throughout the ordeal.In the next stanza, lines 23-24 â€Å"What a trash / To annihilate each decade† show the reader that she is equating something to death, that around every ten years something forceful occurs that compels her to view the last decade as a waste. This is the emergence of her views of sex in the poem. Here she references a forced sexual act, or some form of abuse that has happened twice in the speaker’s life, which she fears is going to happen again. Stanzas 12 and 13 give us a limited background of the speaker; she notes in lines 35 and 36: â€Å"The first time it happened I was ten. / It was an accident.† By now, one has established that she equates death to sex, as she couldn ’t possibly have actually died a physical death at age ten; her claim that it was an accident shows her innocence of youth, that even twenty years later, she can maintain that a sexual act could have been an accident. In the next stanza, she states: â€Å"The second time I meant / To last it out and not come back at all† (37-38). That passage simply lets the reader know that by the second time, chronologically at twenty years old, the speaker wanted nothing more to do with the act of sex, or for her, the pain and suffering that â€Å"death† or sex brought. But she then goes on to say that â€Å"Dying / is an art / I do it exceptionally well† (43-45). The speaker feels that she dies each time she has sex, and eventually, she has come to accept this as her gift, a sordid way to kill herself (or a part of herself) every time she engages in the act. â€Å"The peanut crunching crowd† (26) exemplifies how the speaker views her life almost as a circus; sh e feels constantly watched by spectators, that she is being judged for each and every action. â€Å"The big strip tease† (29) is a reference back to the mummy of the Lazarus metaphor, but adds more to the tone of anger, the sarcasm apparent in this entire poem. The speaker has almost mummified herself, a form of perseverance; even if she is a spectacle in the circus, judged and monitored when they strip away all the layers, she realizes â€Å"I am the same identical woman† (34).The final metaphorical section to examine is found within the last stanza:Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air. (82-84)In this passage, the speaker compares herself to a phoenix; like the phoenix (and Lazarus), the speaker is born anew after each â€Å"death.† Similarly, she feels she rises out of her own remains, stronger than before. These final lines seem almost a warning to not only â€Å"Herr God, Herr Lucifer† (79), but to all men, a warning that they should watch out because, like a fire, she plans to consume and destroy all men in her rage and rebirth. The form of this poem is rather constant: it’s a collection of three-lined stanzas with no discernible rhyme pattern or syllabic scheme. It is very repetitive in form, and, in fact, as the poem progresses, the same words are repeated. This is not so much for emphasis, but for one to see how trapped the speaker feels inside of her life, her relationships, and even the very poem describing her entrapment. There are a few cases of enjambment, but the most important and relevant occurs in line 53: the repetition â€Å"the same place, the same face, the same brute† automatically makes the reader assume that â€Å"brute† is a noun, presumably referencing her partner. Upon continuation in line 54, however, the phrase â€Å"Amused shout† makes â€Å"brute† into an adjective describing the doctor’s shouts. There is also repetition of the phra se â€Å"I do it† (â€Å"it† referring to sex) in lines 45-47, as a mantra for her to regain some sense of control, to reclaim a part of herself that she feels is lost; by repeating this phrase, by convincing herself that she is in control, she can maintain some power in the matter. In lines 65 and 66, there is not only repetition â€Å"So, so Herr Doktor. / So, Herr enemy† but a uniting of all of the metaphors. â€Å"Herr† is German (the language spoken by the Nazis) for â€Å"mister† or â€Å"sir,† the title given to all men. To paraphrase the following stanzas, the speaker states that she recognizes that she feels like a valuable piece of property that one man claims to own, and then she becomes incensed. At this, she proceeds to announce her likeness to the phoenix and issues a warning to all men, both in this world and in the â€Å"afterlife.†Essentially, the poem â€Å"Lady Lazarus† by Sylvia Plath uses multifaceted met aphors to show how the speaker feels scrutinized and owned by her relationships, trapped in a marriage. Plath accentuates this feeling by repetition, enjambment, and the underlying equation of sex to death. The speaker has continued to â€Å"die† and has reached her breaking point. She plans to rise again, and all men should take heed to beware her wrath.Work CitedPlath, Sylvia. â€Å"Lady Lazarus.† The Norton Introduction to Poetry. Ed. Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, Kelly J. Mays. 8th edition. New York: W. W. Norton Company Ltd., 2002. 519-521.

Characterization in From Sleep Unbound - Literature Essay Samples

Oppression is a common theme in literature; this is not surprising in light of humanity’s history of vying for power. In literature as in society, are many factors behind oppression differences in skin color, sex, religion, and family history among them. The one motivation which ties these together is a desire to be in control and an aversion to those who are different. The first step in overcoming oppression is the realization that the system needs to change. This sounds simple, but changing the mentality of an entire society is truly a difficult task which requires the effort of many. In the novel From Sleep Unbound, Andrà ©e Chedid uses characterization to reflect the theme that as long as somebody is brave enough to change, there is hope for a system to grow past oppression. Samya, the main character, is an example of a victim of oppression in late 20th Century Egypt, and her tragic end is an inevitable result of an unjust system. Samya is one of the few to actively rebel against this society. She is a minority rebel compared to most of the women who openly accept their role in the system. However, the other women have distractions: they work, they take care of children, they talk with each other. Samya is alone, with a pitiful excuse of a family and an isolation that stems from marrying into a wealthy family. She has to face the corrupted system by herself, and one person cannot beat an entire system. Samya explains her motivation to rebel, claiming â€Å"Others besides myself must have felt their souls worn away by the interminable length of a life without love. They will understand me†¦ And if there is only one who understands me, it is for her that I protest as loudly as I can† (Chedid 133). Perhaps the cruelest fact is the most Samya can do to fight this system is to accept death. She is a lone soldier at war with an idea, a warped mentality. She â€Å"suffer[s] from something much deeper than boredom†¦ Days [come] one after another, smothering the past, but they [bring] no relief. [Her] pain never [stops] burning. [She wants] to put an end to it† (Chedid 130). She feels she has nothing to lose. In light of these ideas, the reader can see the murder of her husband is inevitable. It is only a matter of time before she lashes out. When Samya does lash out, even her act of murder and passive acceptance of death do not convince the people of the village that there is a problem within their society. Similarly to the situation in which the depressed man commit suicide by setting himself on fire, most only see fault with her. However, also similarly to that situation, one person sees the true core of the problem and is changed by it. Samya’s action impacts Ammal’s heart. Surprisingly, Boutros can also be considered a victim of the system. Admittedly, he passively implements the system without second thoughts because it benefits him. For example, â€Å"Boutros never forgot to place a kiss on [Samya’s] forehead each evening, a ritual he could not do without†¦ This thought stirred in [Samya] a last impulse toward revolt†¦ One day [she] would no longer be able to bear it. [She] knew this† (Chedid 138). Boutros, by habit, kisses Samya. He believes it is his right as a husband, and perhaps even feels he is blessing Samya with his kiss. He is oblivious to the rebellion which is stirring in her, and the fact that in Samya’s depression â€Å"Every one of the people around [her] seemed heavy with symbolic meaning, and in [her] eyes took on exaggerated importance. The image of Boutros, for example, went far beyond Boutros†¦ [she] loaded upon him [her] own sorrows as well as those of the whole world†¦ To [her], he had be come the symbol of those who live by principles as dried up as their souls† (Chedid 132-133). In the perspective of Samya, Boutros is a living representation of the oppression Samya is confined by. But the reader must keep in mind that this is the norm of Egypt, and Boutros has never known any other way of life. Can the fault be put solely on him when society made him this way? The women of the village can be viewed as one entity, as well as representative of the most frustrating component of a warped social system. The women are the oppressed who accept oppression, those who have let themselves be convinced that they are truly lesser. This is shown when the woman Ratiba’s father and brother kill her sister Sayyeda for talking to an unmarried man, and Om el Kher (a popular woman in the village) does not support Ratiba in her anger. Instead, she claims Ratiba’s â€Å"father and her brother are right in a way. In all the villages the men approved of the murder. It was an affair of honor. The men, above all, approved it. The women took it as a warning† (Chedid 80). Here is an emphasis on how the men approved of this murder, and the women passively accepted this as a type of reminder of their standing in society. The horror of the act is inconsequential, in light of the patriarchal hierarchy in place. The women actually perpetuate the syste m which hinders them by excluding Ratiba and calling her bitter, telling her to be quiet and as passive as they are. Samya, similarly, is not included with these women. She is ostracized for being barren, and eventually ostracizes herself by rejecting the advice of the sacred Sheika regarding her infertility. This rift between Samya and the rest of the women is significant, because as mentioned earlier, isolation is what pushes Samya off the edge and makes her more open to rebellion. Ironically, as an outsider she has the most objective perspective of the nature of their situation. The question arises: why do the victims self-impose this system? Do they feel change is impossible, that pretending it is okay will be better than attempting to make a change? Or perhaps, they are too tired to make a change. Whatever the reasoning may be, the motive is inconsequential. The reality of this situation is that because the women accept their fate, they damn themselves and future generations to a life of suffocation under the weight of patriarchy and repressive tradition. The blind man is the only male in the novel who sees the corruption of the nation, and he speaks out against it. He is described as â€Å"some sort of silent divinity who [reigns] over the village when the men [are] away.† Om el Kher tells Samya that â€Å"’The day Bahia was beaten, [the blind man] got angry.’ But Om el Kher excused him, saying, ‘It is such a long time since he saw anything. He lives in another world.’ When his anger rises, he beats the ground with his stick† (Chedid 81). Om el Kher has to excuse the blind man for his minor rebellion and his disapproval of the violence, because the only socially acceptable response to whatever the men decide is an unfaltering acceptance. The only reason he is allowed even this angry act of beating the stick is because he is old, feeble, blind, and therefore not a threat to the other men. At the end of the novel, after Samya has killed Boutros, Ammal realizes she does not want the same life as Samya. She makes a decision, and a woman who sees I cries out: â€Å"’Ammal is running!’ Leaning against the wall, the blind man breathes in peace. How she can run, Ammal! How she runs!† (Chedid 141). Notably, with the action of Ammal, the blind man â€Å"breathes in peace,† reflecting his joy in her decision to take action. Ammal runs because she cannot do anything else. She runs despite all of the logic, the facts which tell her that realistically she has nowhere to go. Logic and facts do not matter, because playing it safe, following the rules, constantly considering the consequences- are what have allowed the oppression to continue on for so long. Ammal sees what so few in the village see- change must occur as quickly as possible, with as much fervor as one can manage, or change will not occur at all. Chedid teaches us with this ending, neither ha ppy nor sad but necessary: do not settle, do not be okay; sometimes all you can do is run.