(2 CITATIONS, JOURNAL, EBOOKS)

SUMMARY

THEMES
The themes of the poem are death and suicide.
Throughout “Lady Lazarus”, the speaker the theme of death and suicide is very significant in the
poem. The speaker compares herself to Lazarus, a man whom Jesus resurrected. The speaker has
died many times but she has been brought back to life from time to time again. The speaker has
express death and suicide in this poem as freedom and an escape from suffering. In this poem,
the speaker expresses her anger towards people who brought her back to life.

FORM, RHYTHM, RHYME, AND METER

“Lady Lazarus” consists of twenty-eight stanzas. Each stanza consists of three lines. This poem
is an intense sounding poem. It doesn’t have a set rhyme, there are many repeated sounds
throughout this poem.

ANALYSIS
In this poem, the speaker’s tone is revealed through different poetic aspects. Throughout
her writing, the speaker’s attitude towards death appears to be happy but Plath’s use of poetic
devices shows that her attitude is bitter.
According to the bible, “Lazarus” was a man who was resurrected by Jesus. From the tittle,
this poem is about death and resurrection. The poem starts with “I have done it again.”, “One year
in every ten” refers to the speaker’s attempts to commit suicide every decade of her life. Plath
then begins to explain her attempts to commit suicide. She uses Holocaust imagery and metaphor
to indicate herself as a Jewish victim by comparing her skin to a “Nazi lampshade”, a lampshade
made from Jew’s skin during Nazi era.
In the fifth stanza, “The nose, the eye pits, full set of teeth” refers to the decomposition of
a body. These are the features that will be most prominent in a decaying body. Plath uses the
imagery to explain the emptiness and numbness that tortured her soul. She uses the description of
decomposition to convey the way she feels that her soul is decomposing. The speaker then
transitions from speaking of herself as a dead woman, to revealing that she is actually alive.
However, the tone of “Lady Lazarus” reveals that she is disappointed that she is alive.
In the sixth stanza, she reveals her disappointment that she has not been able to die as she
compare herself to “a cat that have nine times to die”. The next stanza she begins to reveals that
every decade, she has come close to death. When she says “this is number three” reveals that she
has tried to die three times. “What a trash”, “To annihilate each decade” suggest that Plath’s once
a decade suicide attempt are actually a waste.
In the ninth stanza, she criticizes the “peanut crunching crowd” suggesting that they are
only in her life to mock her. Later, she uses the imagery of “big strip tease” to portray her
resentment towards the society. She then starts to tell the readers her experiences with death, she
begins with “the first time it happened I was ten”, explaining her first near death experience was
ten years old and she claims it to be an “accident”. Her first near death experience might be
traumatizing but she somehow wanted another taste of death. The speaker continues to reveal
that her “second time” is her first suicide attempt. She also “meant to last it out”, “I rocked shut”
which reveals she has no desire to live any longer.
“Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well”, she explains her interest
and ‘talent’ in this ‘art”. She claims that death is her “call” as she reveals that the only way to
escape from this suffering, emptiness, and numbness is death. But every time she gets a taste of
death, she ends up surviving, resuming her suffering.
The speaker continues to tell the readers about the source of her suffering, “Herr Doktor”,
“Herr Enemy”. Herr refers to Mr. in German. Once again, Plath uses the Holocaust imagery of
Nazi doctors who brought the Jewish victims back to health, resuming their suffering. The
repetition of “Herr” emphasizes that her enemy are all men. In twenty-third stanza, she reveals
her belief that she is “valuable” to men as an object, beautiful, but hard and lifeless. She uses
sarcasm when she states “do not think I underestimate your great concern”. She feels that her
death, to people around her, would be nothing more than a burning piece of jewelry.
In the last few stanzas, her tone changes to furious and revenge. She continues to blame
men, “God and Lucifer” indicating that they are men. She feels that men hold some kind of
power over her. She warns men to beware of her as she will “rise with her red hair” and she will
“eat men like air”. She warns men that she is no longer powerless under them and she is ready to
take her revenge.