How does Sylvia Plath Reveal the Emotional Journey of Her Life Through the Poem ‘Words’?

Sylvia Plath Reveal the Emotional Journey of Her Life Through the Poem ‘Words’

In ‘Words’ Sylvia Plath seems to lay bare the emotional journey of her life, from creative power to despair and death. The poem is structured as a series of stanza-paragraphs, each exploring a different aspect of the subject. Distinct but interlocking images unify the ideas and reveal a progression of perceptions about the nature of poetic utterance.

 

The poet has made metaphorical use of nature in her poem. The first stanza suggests that the act of writing is strenuous like chopping down a tree. The difficulties of writing are evoked again in the second stanza when the sap ‘wells like tears’. Like water seeking to dominate the rock, the poet has t struggle to establish her mastery over words. Sylvia Plath perhaps sees this as a battle to overcome death. Water is frequently linked to dying in her work, and here the rock is ‘A white skull/Eaten by weedy greens’, as projected in the third stanza. In the final stanza the poet has surrendered to the ‘fixed stars’ of death that has pervaded her life and her work. She recognizes that while she dies her words will live on. There is no denying the fact that ‘Words’ was written only ten days before Sylvia Plath’s death by suicide.