Athena Ganetsos

“It’s Worse than a Barnyard”: Animal Imagery in Plath’s Poetry
Sylvia Plath uses many images in her poetry in order to convey a certain tone to the reader. One image that is prevalent throughout several of her poems is the image of animals. Typically, Plath uses animal imagery in order to portray concepts in a negative way, as demonstrated in her poems “Stillborn”, “Morning Song”, and “The Colossus”.
Plath uses animal imagery in “Stillborn” in order to portray her struggle as a writer. She compares her poems to a stillborn baby, saying that they have no life or meaning. For example, in lines eleven and twelve she states, “They are not pigs, they are not even fish/though they have a piggy and fishy air” (Stillborn, 11-12). Here Plath is portraying her writer’s block as a stillborn, using animals in an extremely negative connotation. The word “piggy” presents her poems negatively because pigs usually represent something dirty or disgusting. Therefore, the reader is automatically given a negative first impression of her “stillborn” poems. Similarly, the word “fishy” describes Plath’s poems in a negative light. This is because the word is normally used to describe something cold and lifeless. From these examples, it is evident that Sylvia Plath used animal imagery in “Stillborn” to portray her poems negatively.
Animal imagery is also used by Plath in her poem “Morning Song”. In this poem, she uses animal imagery to convey the struggles of being a mother in a negative connotation. In the beginning of the poem, for instance, Plath addresses her child and states, “All night your moth-breath/Flickers among the flat pink roses” (Morning Song, 11-12). This clearly illustrates Plath’s use of animal imagery to indicate her struggle with motherhood. The connotation of the term “moth-breath” is unpleasant, because moth balls tend to have a foul odor. By using this term, Plath is describing the difficulties of being a mother to her readers, and showing that she will do anything for her kids, even though motherhood is not pleasant all the time. Additionally, Plath describes in “Morning Song”, “One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral/In my Victorian nightgown” (Morning Song, 15-16). Here Plath is again using animals, in this case a cow, to describe the challenges of being a mother unfavorably. By stating that her gown is “cow-heavy”, the reader gets a sense of how hard Plath works to care for her children, and how difficult motherhood is for her.
Another poem in which Sylvia Plath uses animal imagery with a negative connotation is “The Colossus”. Here animal imagery is used by Plath to portray men in a poor light. In the first stanza of the poem, Plath expresses, “Mule-bray, pig-grunt, and bawdy cackles/Proceed from your great lips/It’s worse than a barnyard” (The Colossus, 3-5). In these examples, Plath uses the images of mules and pigs to describe the way men sound when they talk. This depicts men very adversely, because pigs and mules are typically considered to be sordid animals. Plath again uses animal imagery to portray men in unfavorably occurs in the third stanza, “I crawl like an ant in mourning” (The Colossus, 12). Here Plath is expressing how hard she has worked for men, and using the image of an ant to indicate her frustration.
Animal imagery is used frequently in Plath’s poems. Through her three poems “Stillborn”, “Morning Song”, and “The Colossus”, Plath uses animal imagery to convey various concepts and ideas in an unfavorable manner. By becoming aware of Plath’s use of this image, the reader gains a much better understanding of her masterful poetry.
Word Count: 601