Hannah Weiss

The Best and the Brightest: Heavenly Body Imagery in Sylvia Plath's Poetry
Sylvia Plath wrote about issues that she felt passionately about. These issues include the way that women had to live during the 1950's, and the depression and anger she felt in response to her father's death. Her poems that deal with those topics are filled with imagery, and in the case of "Two Sister's of Persephone" and "The Colossus," one of the most significant image groups is heavenly bodies. In one she uses only images of the sun, while the other includes stars, clouds, the sun, and a lightning-stroke. However, in both poems heavenly body imagery serves the same two purposes. Firstly, the imagery emphasizes how strongly Plath felt about the issues that she compares them to, and secondly, it helps Plath make a comparison between two aspects within the poems.
The most obvious effect of the heavenly body imagery that Plath uses in "Two Sisters of Persephone" and "The Colossus" is that it demonstrates the importance that Plath connected with each poem's respective topic. Heavenly bodies are important and awe-inspiring to us, so when Plath uses them in connection to women's roles or her father, we are able to better understand how strongly she felt about both of those issues. In "The Colossus," Plath writes of the problems she has had dealing with her father's death. A line in the fourth stanza reads, "It would take more than a lightning-stroke to create such a ruin" ("The Colossus" 22). The image of the lightning-stroke helps the reader to understand the extent of the damage that Plath feels that her father has caused her, because lightning-strokes are of course known for their ability to cause wreckage. Likewise, by using heavenly body imagery in "Two Sisters of Persephone," Plath makes us connect significance to the issue she discusses in that poem. "Two Sisters of Persephone" about the fact that women of her time had essentially only two choices of how to live, and neither was particularly desirable. She first describes a woman who works all day "in her dark wainscoted room," ("Two Sisters" 5), and then one whose life has more excitement, but also more pain. Plath uses images of the sun twice, first with "the sun's blade" in line nineteen, and then calling the second sister the sun's bride in line twenty-one. Again, imagery of a heavenly body is used to illustrate the importance that Plath wants the reader to connect with the issue she was writing about.
The heavenly body imagery that Plath employs throughout her poems is not there only to demonstrate the importance of the poems' content. In both "Two Sisters of Persephone and "The Colossus," heavenly body imagery also serves to make a comparison within the poem. In "Two sisters of Persephone, heavenly body imagery is only used in the three stanzas that are devoted to the second sister. The reason for that is that Plath wanted to show that one of the differences between the two women is how much bigger the second sister's life was. For example, she writes, "She sees how their red silk flare/ Of petaled blood/ Burns open to the sun's blade" ("Two Sisters of Persephone" 17-20). This line demonstrates the drama and comparative freedom in the second sister's life. The specific places where she uses heavenly body imagery is also important in "The Colossus." The first three stanzas are about Plath herself, and not contain any heavenly body imagery. Instead, all mention of stars, clouds, and lightning occurs when she is discussing her father in the last three stanzas. For example, line twenty-seven is "The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue." Since heavenly bodies are connected with power and importance, and Plath used them in connection to her father rather than herself, we can see that Plath considered herself inferior to her father.
Heavenly bodies are useful to Plath for two reasons. One is that they are demonstrative of power and importance. Plath compares heavenly bodies to the issues that are important to her, so that the reader can better understand how strongly she felt about those issues. The other reason that Plath used heavenly body imagery is that they help her to make comparisons within her poems. In "Two sister's of Persephone" she uses the sun to highlight the differences between the two sisters, and in "The Colossus" she is comparing her father to herself. In both poems, Plath uses images of heavenly body imagery because of the sense of power they lend to her lines.

Word count: 735