"Dying is an art, like anything else. I do it exceptionally well." Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Sylvia Plath has long been recognized as a poetic icon. After committing suicide in her thirties, many of her previously unrecognized works gained notoriety and praise. All her life she struggled to be accepted in the literary world. After writing many poems, short stories, and "The Bell Jar," she became dissatisfied with the success and momentum she gained with each and took her own life. It is through her words that we see a woman who used writing as a means of expression, many times expressing pain, sadness, and anger. Plath began writing a series of poems shortly before her death that give her the opportunity to see the internal conflicts she felt. Many of these poems focus on death and suffering. Plath uses images of death in the poems found in Ariel to represent her need to escape reality and therefore dissociate from emotional and physical existence. I will show how Plath's life experiences, and, more importantly, her reactions to them, contributed to her depressive and death-obsessed state. I will also provide examples from many of her poems that demonstrate Plath's use of death imagery and analyze why they are used in this way. Finally, I will show how many of her poems from Ariel demonstrate Plath's self-loathing and her need to feel a sense of success, even if that success comes from a completed suicide. Although Sylvia Plath had many opportunities throughout her life and accomplished what many only dream of, let's see how the few tragedies she endured affected her. At the age of eight his father died from complications related to diabetes. Plath had been very close to her father, and although not much is said about him in "The Bell Jar," the book thought to be Plath's autobiography, we see the internal struggles she felt over his death in her poems found in Ariel. .One of his most acclaimed poems, “Daddy,” shows his sadness and anger on the surface. This poem is written in an angry tone, as if she is struggling to understand something that is unclear to her, mainly the death of her father. Plath attempted suicide twice before writing the poems found in Ariel, and we see her express the need to die so she can be with her father again. “I was ten when they buried you/At twenty I tried to die/And come back, come back, come back to you/I thought even the bones would be okay” (51). We see in these lines how the loss of his father affected his life. When she says, "I thought the bones would be fine too," she is missing realistic thinking. She feels that even just having a small part of her father back would give her a sense of happiness, even though it is clear that this is not possible. This shows Plath's confusion about her father's death and her need to feel close to him. Subsequently we see her talking about a relationship that resembles a marital one more than that between father and daughter. “And I said I do, I do” (51). Since this was written when Plath was suffering from severe depression and her writing was at its peak, one may believe that her lines between her father and her husband were somewhat "blurred" and she speaks of both as "daddy". Linking the two together shows Plath admitting that her lack of relationship with her father ultimately led to failed relationships with men throughout her life. At the time the Ariel poems were written, Plath's husband TedHughes, had left her and was having an affair with another woman. This became another event in his life that contributed to the deterioration of his mental state and subsequent use of death imagery. In “Daddy” we see Plath show grief over the loss of her father, but we also see her anger towards Hughes emerge. “Dad, I had to kill you” (49). Here Plath limits herself to the fact that Hughes is not coming back, so she feels the need to "kill him", or at least the idea of ​​​​being together again. The last line of this poem shows Plath's contentment with death and her erratic and angry thought patterns. “Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I'm done” (51). Plath succumbs to the idea of ​​death as the loss of Hughes is yet another failure for her, leaving her with yet another reason not to continue living. While some of Plath's works are cheerful in nature such as "The Bed Book", a children's book, the poems found in Ariel are loaded with images of death indicating Plath's loss of reality and her need to detach herself from different emotions from the negative ones. In "Lady Lazarus" she writes the quote found at the beginning of this article: "Dying is an art, like anything else. I do it exceptionally well" (7). Many of us know that dying is not something that can be considered an art form. Once done, there is no chance of doing it again. However, Plath shows us how her obsession with death consumed her to the point where she took pride in it and made it a "hobby". We see how Plath becomes emotional again at the idea of ​​death in “Lady Lazarus” when she says, “Soon, soon the flesh / The grave eaten in the cave will be / At home upon me / And I am a smiling woman.” (6). In “The Birthday Present” we see Plath anticipating a gift, but at the same time demonstrating ambiguity. She wonders what the gift might be, yet she says, “Anyway I don't want a big present this year/After all I'm only alive by chance” (42). This shows how Plath cannot be excited about a gift when she is less than thrilled to even be alive. Many of Plath's poems show a sense of self-loathing and internal disappointment. These poems show how the image of herself contributed to her thoughts of death and failure. Plath wrote "Sheep In Fog", found in Ariel, which shows Plath's ideas about how others see her. "People or stars look at me with sadness, I disappoint them... They threaten to go to heaven..."(3). Threat is usually used to convey a negative consequence to an action. Most people consider heaven to be the ideal place to go after death. Plath uses the phrase "threatens to let me go to heaven" to show how she feels she doesn't want to go there, or perhaps doesn't deserve it. Plath's poem "Cut" tells of a girl who accidentally cuts her thumb and is suddenly entranced by it. It shows the point of view of the mind of a self-mutilator. Many people who mutilate themselves do so because it evokes an emotion. Many people who suffer from this problem find that cutting themselves creates a sense of accomplishment. In "Cut", Plath says "How exciting. My thumb instead of an onion" (13). This leads us to believe that he intended to cut the onion, but instead hit his thumb and, after carefully examining the results - he was bleeding from the wound - became infatuated with it. The last verse reads, “How you jump the drilled veteran / Dirty girl / thumb stump” (13). This leads me to believe that Plath is disappointed that she "jumped" when she cut herself, which for Plath shows weakness, when she should have tolerated it better. Calling herself "Dirty Girl" once again accentuates the idea that Plath uses her words to show her destroyed self-image. We see Plath's perception of herself and others.