The two poems ‘Daddy’ and ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’ the intense, unorthodox emotion expressed is really blatant, raw and direct.In ‘Daddy’ the emotions articulated and conveyed are anger, sadness, depression and regret. She is sad due to her fathers death at the tender age of 8 from diabetes. Sylvia Plath father was a German, his name was Otto. Otto friend had died before he had become ill. He died of lung cancer, he compared the symptoms of his own to his friend and believed that he too had lung cancer ,but in actual fact he had diabetes. He did not seek treatment by the time he did eventually seek treatment the diabetes had progressed too far.
The emotions expressed by Sylvia are very obvious and easy to spot as Sylvia Plath writing is quite blunt, truthful and straight to the point. Sylvia poems are mostly expressing anger, sadness or depression. Sylvia experienced a hard emotionally testing during her short life. As her father died a week after her 8th Birthday this could make any fragile mind crack and feel completely of hate sadness and depression. Some people who believe in a faith and one of there loved ones die they question their faith or lose faith; Sylvia Plath was no different, especially as she had a nature of question why things were the way they were, she was raised as a Unitarian Christian, she lose her faith and became ambivalent about religion for the rest of her life.
Another traumatic experience in her life was her divorce from her husband because of an affair he was having. She described him as “a singer, story-teller, lion and world-wanderer” with “a voice like the thunder of God”.
‘Daddy’ is written very unorthodox especially for a women those times. I the times she wrote this around the 1950s were society expected women to be in the kitchen to have no voice, obey their husband, build a home and clean the house . Furthermore she is sad as her father is gone and can not come back she says she has attempted to join her father meaning commit suicide. ‘I had to kill you’ this means that she tried to forget to eradicate the thought of her dad from as this brings her grief.
The Arrival of the Bee Box
She seems to be sarcastic in her description example ‘i wonder how hungry they are i wonder if they forget me if i just undid the locks and stood back and pretend to be tree’ . It also suggestion she is inquisitive she is wanted to see what was inside even though she order it. This suggest curiosity and a bit of. fear she also has anticipation and anxiety of what is to come, furthermore she order it but does know what to expect…..
I believe the Bee Box could represent the memories of her father….. A bee box in literal terms is a beehive in a box where bees live and raise their young (memories of her when he was alive and raise her as a child). When she says ‘I wonder how hungry they are, I wonder if they would forget me’ suggesting they are wild and not domesticated. This could indicate her feelings a memories of her dad run wild and have the ability to not just intimidate her but control her and consume her rational thoughts. For bees Honey Combs hexagonal are used to store food (memories or certain significant days). Hexagons are efficient as the lines are as short as it can possible be if large area is to filled with the fewest number of hexagons (the little memories are more important and significant) . This means the honeycomb requires less wax to construct (even she had a short time with her dad she built a big relationship and connection with him) and gains lots of strength under compression (the strength of her connect increase during hard times, this could also influence her actions of wanting to meet her dad by committing suicide).
November 6, 2012 at 7:21 am
Both the writing and the thinking behind this response are excellent. What do you think the bee box could represent?
November 6, 2012 at 7:56 pm
By the way, I can’t express enough how much I approve of the fact that you go back to these entries and correct your spelling errors. This is excellent high-standard scholarly behaviour
November 12, 2012 at 10:00 pm
Your thinking about the hexagons is highly original and extraordinarily clever – it doesn’t matter whether Sylvia Plath intended it, you’ve come up with a brilliant independent interpretation of this poem which I find exciting and vibrant.
The job now is to form a response to the actual question using all this knowledge and information that you’ve created. Remember it’s about the emotions or voices of women – the big task now is to think of what you can do to structure your answer. Here are some ideas:
To get the best possible grade from this assessment, you must:
1) make sure you’re developing an argument that is coherent. The question asks about the presentation of women’s emotions and Raphael was completely on it when he referred to women’s voices – being silenced or otherwise
2) demonstrating confident understanding of the texts and their context. Remember the Taming of the Shrew is a comedy – and as such many of the extremes were designed for comic effect. This does not undermine that Katharina is not just a figure of fun, but also very witty herself. Don’t forget that in Shakespeare’s time, not only was this female character written by a male author but she would have also been performed by a man. This would have intensified the comic effect. You may also want to discuss the many-layers of deception in the play, and consider how this relates to women
In respect of Sylvia Plath’s poetry, you’re dealing with writing by a woman about matters that are very close and personal. This is then an authentic female voice. The issues are grave and the tone a lot more serious and violent.
3) You need to devise a clear structure for your answer. Will you look at different elements of the stylistics of the texts, will you compare them to each other? how will you make sure you meet all the performance criteria (check the task outline for these)
4) If you are able to integrate your analysis of language and the techniques of play writing (dramatic irony and the like) as well as the techniques of poetry used by Plath, you are going to be able to develop the most sophisticated answer. Remember you don’t have to compare and contrast the texts, you simply have to explore both in detail, looking at similar areas and drawing attention to any interesting parallels or differences.
5) Knowledge of Shakespeare and shakespeare’s time and Plath and Plath’s time does count, but is best communicated in relation to the texts and the points you’re making.
I’d be keen to see you write a clear plan in bullet points so that your writing can become focused and organised and to allow you to make sure you’re able to wrestle all this complex information into one essay that makes one broad point about the presentation of women’s emotions.
Let me know if you need any assistance with this.
Cheers
Mr Waugh