1.      INTRODUCTION

 

In this paper on Sylvia Plath, an American writer,   I’m going to talk about her famous poetry. She was a poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is also famous for her tragic life and suicide. She committed suicide placing her head in the oven in her kitchen while the gas was turned on.

(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_plath )

The poem that I have chosen in order to analyze it is Mushrooms included in Collected Poems (1959).

(cf. http://www.eliteskills.com/c/12621 )

 

As we are going to notice, Sylvia Plath was clearly a feminist who lived in a stage in which nobody take into account the job, or labours women made.

 

 

2.      THE POEM

 

Mushrooms

 

"Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door."

 

(cf. http://www.eliteskills.com/c/12621 )

 

 

3. ANALYSIS OF THE POEM

3.1. THE TITLE

Many species of mushrooms seemingly appear overnight, growing or expanding rapidly.  With the title referring to the mushrooms, she wants to show us that women are similar to mushrooms as they grow secretly and she used the mushrooms as a metaphor that means that the mass of women was slowly rising more and more powerful without anyone noticing.

3.2. THEMES

For me, the main theme of this poem written by Sylvia Plath is the women rights and how they were treated in a male chauvinism society.

3.3. STRUCTURE

Sylvia Plath divided this poem into eleven stanzas of three verses each one. As they content, I would divide it into two parts. In the first part, I would include the first nine stanzas and in the second part, the two last ones. First, the author describes what a mushroom is and then, she says that the mushrooms have to do something in order to avoid the things that she has said before.

3.4. STYLE

3.4.1. COMMUNICATIVE STRUCTURE

The speaker of the poem is the author because the poem is written in 3rd person. We can find some pronouns that show us it. Examples of them are “our” (lines 4, 14 and 33), “ourselves” (line 29), “we” (lines 25, 26, 27 and 31) and “us” (lines 7, 8, 23 and 24). The author is talking about women and also about herself.

Taking into account the verbal tenses, I have to say that all the text is written into present as we can see in lines 25 and 26 for example “are” and in the last stanza, we can find a modal verb “shall” and with it, Sylvia Plath tried to persuade the women to fight against the chauvinist society.

3.4.2. COHESION

This poem is characterized by its absence of connectors. I have been looking for some connectors and I only have found two of them “and” in line 28 and “or” in line 22. We can see a lot of juxtaposition which is a rhetoric technique.

On the other hand, I would like to pay attention on the rhetorical devices I have found. Firstly, I would like to mention that the poem itself is a metaphor because talking about mushrooms, she is not talking about them, and she is talking about women.  Then, I have noticed that there are some metaphors within the poem. An example of these metaphors could be “our foot’s in the door” in the last line that could mean that the women could have all the power without men. We have a personification when she treats the mushrooms as people and comparisons when she says “we are shelves, we are tables…” (Lines 25 and 26).

3.4.3. LEXIS AND SEMANTICS

Looking for some lexical fields of the poems, from my point of view, we could find one dealing with NATURE “air” (line 6), “water” (line 19) and “earth” (line 32), another of FURNITURE “shelves” (line 25), “tables” (line 26) and “door” (line 33), of BODY “toes” (line 4), “noses” (line 4), “earless” (line 15), “eyeless” (line 15) and “foot” (line 33), etc.

3.4.4. RHYTHM AND RHYME

This poem hasn’t got any apparent rhyme, as we can observe perfectly. I would say that it is unrhymed and the author wrote it without taking into account the rhyme. Although it hasn’t got rhyme, it has got a good rhythm because of its brief verses and the juxtaposition.

4. PERSONAL INTERPRETATION

The poem seems to be very simple but it has a deep meaning behind them. As I have said before, the mushrooms are women.

Sylvia Plath, as a feminist writer, wrote many poems about women rights and this could be about women rising to power and becoming more.

 (cf.http://thispageintentionallyleftblank.net/index.php/site/comments/mushrooms_sylvia_plath_overnight/ )

 

She lived in a period in which there were no recognitions for women and the effort they made and through this poem she would like to persuade all the women to act together.

 

Firstly, she describes the women saying that they are discreet, quiet and with this description, she is trying to say us that the women don’t need to do what the men do in order to gain power, loudly. They use to do it silently and rapidly. 

 

In the 3rd stanza, she wrote “nobody sees us” that means that the male society doesn’t take into account them, they don’t permit them to do something, the women, at that time, didn’t have voice. But this sentence can mean another thing. In my opinion, the other meaning that this sentence can have is that nobody sees how they act and how they grow up. I think so because the following lines say “Stops us, betrays us, the small grains make room”. I could mean that they grow up without any men notice it.

 

In line 16, we have an example of how the women didn’t have voice at that moment “perfectly voiceless” and in lines 25, 26 and 27 “we are shelves, we are tables” saying that they are as objects, they aren’t useful.

 

Finally she tried to transmit to women that they have to fight for there own rights, to grow in society and to reach equality with men and she says that they have to grow together.

 

5. CONCLUSION

 

In order to sum up, I have to say that Sylvia Plath lived in a period in which there were no recognitions for women and the effort they made and in my opinion, this poem is an excellent description of the feminist movement.

 

I have to add that I have chosen this poet because she is a very famous author of this moment and because I like a lot the theme she treated.

 

Finally, I would like to mention the links I have found between this poem and the theme of Love and Worship of Nature. Sylvia Plath is showing us the topic through nature, being the main characters of the poem “mushrooms”. There are other words dealing with nature in the poem (see Lexis and Semantics).

 

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

-         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_plath

Home: < www.wikipedia.org > 20/05/07)

 

-         http://www.eliteskills.com/c/12621

Home: < www.eliteskills.com > 20/05/07)

 

http://thispageintentionallyleftblank.net/index.php/site/comments/mushrooms_sylvia_plath_overnight/

Home: < www.thispageintentionallyleftbalnk.net > 20/05/07)