Rohan Shah

“Full Moon in a Dark Sky”: Sylvia Plath’s Use of Colors in her Respective Poems

Why does Plath use colors so frequently in her poems? Sylvia Plath wrote in the midst of growing racial tensions in 1950’s and 1960’s America. Her journals and poetry give her mixed feelings towards her status as a middle-class white woman in the 1950’s New England. The presence of racial imagery is used throughout the poems. The idea black and white fall heavily into this category and under the group of color symbolism, which is used widely as well in her poems. In “The Bee Meeting” and “Stings,” images of the color white are used to help to portray Plath’s characteristics of false purity, and contrast all the negative happenings in her life, which she refers to with the color black.
Plath centers in on the image of purity, and refers to herself as “pure,” but ironically she is not. Plath says this because she wants to be considered an untainted woman. In this sense, the narrator uses the color white, in the poem, “The Bee Meeting,” to represent the idea of purity, and death, but death being positive from the perspective from Plath. “Now they are giving me a fashionable white straw Italian hat/And a black veil that molds to my face, they are making me one of them” (line 55-56, stanza 11). Here it is evident that Plath uses the color white to show that she is at peace when the bees are released and are making her one of them. The bees are the creatures that are responsible for the death of her father. She wants to pass with the bees taking her because of the fact that she cannot find a fatherly figure or a spouse. Sylvia also talks about the color white, meaning tranquility, and false purity in the sense of her passing away in her grave. “Who is that long white box in the grove, what have they accomplished, why am I/cold?” (line 55-56, stanza 11).Plath admits that the bees have taken her away and have taken her to her tomb where she must die. The central figure of authority in the poem is the queen, which in this case, is her father. Like all worker bees must die for the duties of their queen, Sylvia must die after “serving” him.
Plath focuses, also, on images with dull and lifeless shades of color that enable her to create a dreary environment for the poem. The narrator uses the color black throughout the poem “Daddy,” to depict her father as a wicked man. Plath reveals a model that she completed, of her father as, "A man in black, with a Meinkampf look" (line 65, stanza 1). Here, Plath uses German speech that reminds the reader, additionally of the idea of Nazi’s. The color black links Plath’s father with devastation and death. In the beginning of the poem, an image of a "black shoe in which I have lived like a foot" (line 2, stanza l) is mentioned. Consequently, the shoe is the father's web, manipulating the speaker's awareness. Line forty-seven describes the sky as black, that light cannot penetrate the darkness. This image shows thick, black smoke rising from a war-torn landscape. Here the father destroys the narrator's future, darkening her emotions. His war machine is relentless. In line fifty-six, the speaker refers to her own heart as "pretty red," but in line seventy-five, she reveals that her father has a "fat black heart." The difference between colors of hearts emphasizes the hatred the speaker has for her father. Her emotional depression toward her father being dead will never lessen.
It is seen now that Plath, in “The Bee Meeting” and “Stings,” gives images of the color white help to portray her own ideas of false purity, and compare all the negative events in her life, which she refers to as “black.” The image effects the novel immensely. Although it may seem oblivious to the reader why she refers to certain objects and people with color characteristics, she uses the colors so much that the reader can eventually understand why Plath uses these color symbols. The theme of one of the poems I used, “The Bee Meeting,” was Mr. Hughes having an affair. Plath uses the color white to symbolize her innocence of her not knowing that her husband was not having an affair. Black and White are two colors that indirectly are very close to Plath.