Howard Park

"Sun's Blade": Sylvia Plath and her Heavenly Bodies

Sylvia Plath was a female poet during a time in which the occupation was dominated by males in the society. She wrote about her life through many means, including imagery and symbolism. A particularly interesting image used in many of her poems is the image of heavenly bodies, such as comets, clouds, sun, stars, moon, planets, etc. Through these she portrays people; men, women, members of society, etc. Many times these roles can be filled by herself while others are filled by people around her, such as by her husband for the sun. Though used for the same purposes they are put out in very different ways.
What do a cloud and a comet have in common? In the context of Sylvia Plath’s poems, quite a lot. They are both temporary as acknowledged by Sylvia. “[cloud’s] own slow / Effacement at the wind’s hand.” (“Morning Song”, 8-9). And also “Scar in the sky, red comet”. Both instances show something that is temporary, and waning. And in the poems they both represent people who Sylvia Plath could be, a cloud mother and a comet maverick. Plath is a mother and quite often acted in a rebellious manor. Also in both instances, it is something that Plath didn’t plan on becoming, she didn’t really plan on being a mother and she didn’t plan on being a rebel, as shown in both the poems.
What differences do a cloud and comet have? Besides the obvious, the cloud could symbolize just about any mother where as the comet only symbolizes Sylvia Plath and her views about how society works. Since the ideas posed upon us by the idea of the comet is that of becoming a “queen bee”, Sylvia Plath says that she tries very hard to become a queen bee and not just a regular drone, what she means by this is that she wants to rise above others and become special. Later in the poems she realizes that the only way for anyone to become a queen bee and become special is to get out and away from the society itself, to become a rebel. This is when, while flying from the hive, Plath describes herself as a comet. The cloud could be used to describe anyone since Plath is giving her testimony about her experience as a mother, which is not all that different from what most other mothers would experience.
So what can be said about her writing is that she uses heavenly bodies to symbolize people in her life as well as herself. Heavenly bodies are used to represent people or figures in Sylvia Plath’s life, but the ways that she does this differs bit by bit from poem to poem Sylvia Plath writes in a way called confessional poetry, which means that the poems are quite personal for her. If we learn what Sylvia Plath is trying to tell us maybe it can give us better insight into her poems and thus her life, since the poems are about her..