Analysis of Sylvia Plath’s ‘Metaphors’: Pregnancy and Poetic Form
Metaphors in Sylvia Plath’s Poem
Literal Comprehension
The pregnant speaker feels like an unsolved question because she does not know the sex of the unborn baby. Her body is big and rounded, like an elephant, a big house, or a melon. The growing baby inside is valuable, like ivory, and well-built. It is like a newly minted coin inside her. She feels helpless, like a pregnant cow, because she is only a means. She has eaten green apples to satisfy her desire to eat something sour. The baby is inside, but she does not know when it will come out.
Interpretation
The nine-syllable, nine lines found in this poem are remarkably symbolic, representing nine months of pregnancy. Each line contains nine syllables: I’m rid dle in nine syl la bles, and the whole poem has nine lines. These are indications of nine months of gestation. All metaphors found in this poem, such as elephant-body, ponderous house-slow, and awkward weighty body, relate to herself or to her pregnancy. It is certainly a humorous and self-mocking poem, reflecting a disturbed state of mind regarding what she is going to bear after nine months, or her nine-syllable, nine-line poem.
Sylvia Plath, the great exponent of the poetry of neurosis, has presented this poem with deep psychological treatment. As her poetry is generally notable for its controlled and intense treatment of extremely painful states of mind, this present poem “Metaphors” is equally important for its metaphorical theme of the poet’s pregnancy. She has considered the resemblances between both the poem and the baby. Physically and mentally, both are within her, and she has been herself a walking riddle, posing a question that awaits solution: what person is she carrying? In other words, she thinks of the poem: what poem is she going to produce? She has shown the interconnection between the fixed cycle of pregnancy and the poetic form of nine-syllable, nine lines.
Critical Thinking
Though this poem successfully describes the condition of a pregnant woman, some ideas presented in the poem are less convincing. Irrespective of the time when this poem was composed, modern technology now enables us to disclose the gender of the baby inside the womb. In addition, she has overlooked the exceptional cases of pregnancy, like giving birth to a baby in more or less than nine months. The speaker is not clear about the number of children she has given birth to. Is this her first pregnancy, or is she already used to it? Is she a single mother?
Comparing the unborn baby with loaf and dough (money) is inhuman. The latter of these two comparisons reveals the intention of the speaker behind giving birth to the baby, that is, he or she will support her financially in the future. Besides, if she is unhappy with being pregnant, it’s her own error. She should have thought of it in advance or before sex. It would have been better if she had used contraception while having intercourse with the to-be-daddy of the to-be-born baby. Still, after conception, she can get an abortion, provided that it is legal to have one. So, technically, this poem seems to be anachronous. Plath seems to concentrate on the symptoms and things that happened to her during the pregnancy rather than the fact that she is bringing another life into the world.
Assimilation
By reading this poem, I learned a great deal about the pregnant woman. Her desire to eat something sour is common all over the world. When I read this poem, I can see a pregnant woman in my mind. I also knew how helpless she feels because she cannot do anything with this inevitable thing. She feels like a means, who is used to satisfy somebody else’s desire.