Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Ryan Adams wants a Sylvia Plath
This song, "Sylvia Plath," is off of Ryan Adams' album Gold. What are your thoughts? As readers of Sylvia Plath, do you think he gets the image of "a Sylvia Plath" right? Do you like or dislike the song?
Monday, October 15, 2012
Sylvia Plath's "Daddy"
“Daddy” by Sylvia Plath
You do not do, you do
not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived
like a foot
For thirty years, poor
and white,
Barely daring to breathe
or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to
kill you.
You died before I had
time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full
of God,
Ghastly statue with one
grey toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the
freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean
green over blue
In the waters off
beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to
recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in
the Polish town
Scraped flat by the
roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town
is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen
or two.
So I never could tell
where you
Put your foot, your
root,
I never could talk to
you.
The tongue stuck in my
jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire
snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German
was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a
Jew.
A Jew to Dachau,
Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a
Jew.
I think I may well be a
Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol,
the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or
true.
With my gypsy ancestress
and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my
Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been
scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe,
your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye,
bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man,
O You---
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could
squeak through.
Every woman adores a
Fascist,
The boot in the face,
the brute
Brute heart of a brute
like you.
You stand at the
blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of
you,
A cleft in your chin
instead of your foot
But no less a devil for
that, no not
Any less the black man
who
Bit my pretty red heart
in two.
I was ten when they
buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back
to you.
I thought even the bones
would do.
But they pulled me out
of the sack,
And they stuck me
together with glue.
And then I knew what to
do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a
Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack
and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally
through.
The black telephone's
off at the root,
The voices just can't
worm through.
If I've killed one man,
I've killed two---
The vampire who said he
was you
and drank my blood for a
year,
Seven years, if you want
to know.
Daddy, you can lie back
now.
There's a stake in your
fat, black heart
And the villagers never
liked you.
They are dancing and
stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you
bastard, I'm through.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Connection to Salinger
One thing I noticed after reading ch. 9 and 10 is that when Esther returns back home and is denied from the writing program, she becomes depressed and she decides she is going to write her own novel. Well, I found her ability to express herself through her "novel" (and i feel this is gonna play a bigger role later on in the book) is very similar to my thesis which was that both Sgt. X and the Chief escape from problems through their own short stories. And I thought that Plath and Salinger were both illustrating through their novels how helpful writing has been to them and how it can act as such a positive outlet to expresses your feelings and problems. Did anyone else kinda realize this?
Sylvia's Views on Men
There were always examples of Plath's feminist style throughout the book, but in chapters 9 and 10 there is an increase of her views on men and women. When Esther is at the bar with Marco, she calls him a "woman hater" right off the bat, and has a passive attitude towards him the whole night. She refuses to stand up for herself while drinking, and when he asks her to dance she says, "I had to choose between following him on to the floorer having my arm torn off". There is a strong theme of mean men in the book, and they take advantage of women all the time. Plath's feminist voice comes out when Esther says, "Women haters are like gods: invulnerable and chock-full of power. I thought it was interesting that Plath weaves her strong women powered views into the book.
Plath's Writing Pattern
As we've said in class, Sylvia Plath was originally a poet. In The Bell Jar we can see the poetic nature of the novel through the use of imagery, similes, metaphors, and a whole lot of detail. Plath also tends to break up the story by putting a short sentence in its own line. For example, "I was supposed to be having the time of my life" (Plath 2). Also, "There were twelve of us at the hotel" (Plath 3). Breaking a piece of writing like this is very similar to the format of poems, but I don't think this pattern of Sylvia Plath is entirely due to her being a poet. I see the short sentences as a heading and the paragraph(s) underneath as a summary of an event in Esther's life. It's as if Esther wrote down bits of her life, titled them, and then rearranged them chronologically so all her memories would add up and make a novel.
I know there are some exceptions to this pattern, but the concept of it is different from any other novel I've read and thought it was worth mentioning.
I know there are some exceptions to this pattern, but the concept of it is different from any other novel I've read and thought it was worth mentioning.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Perks of Being a Wallflower and Bell Jar
I read Perks of Being a Wallflower recently and it was basically the same book as Bell Jar set 50 years ahead and with a male protagonist. In Perks, Charlie is a high school age kid who spends a great deal of the novel dealing with a mental breakdown not unlike Esther's. Perks is composed entirely of Charlie's letters to a random person, so like Bell Jar, it is in first person giving the reader a unique view into the mind of someone who is dealing with depression. I also found it interesting that both Charlie and Esther have similar views on society. Charlie watches his sister go through boyfriends (she's sort of like Doreen) and wonders why women stay with the men they do.
As a bit of a side note, Charlie's a reader and mentions a lot of the books we read/will read this year as well as some songs and movies. Here's a list from Wikipedia
Here's a link too because I can't get this whole copy/paste thing down:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perks_of_Being_a_Wallflower
As a bit of a side note, Charlie's a reader and mentions a lot of the books we read/will read this year as well as some songs and movies. Here's a list from Wikipedia
Here's a link too because I can't get this whole copy/paste thing down:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perks_of_Being_a_Wallflower
Charlie's lists
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