Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2017

future, where like a cat she must experience the horrible emotions of death nine times before

she succeeds and dies. The constant re-appearance of death in Plath’s poetry makes it seem

like it was for show and just a façade. In stanzas 9-10, when the narrator says, “What a million

filaments./ The Peanut-crunching crowd/ Shoves in to see/ Them unwrap me hand and foot ---

--- /The big strip tease./ Gentleman , ladies” is Plath commenting in an ironic way and referring

to the stripping of herself, her happiness, and her will to live as a “strip tease” that people have

come to see as entertainment, and is her attempt at warning and teaching people that her

distressed mental state is real. Lady Lazarus 2 is a cry for help and a warning. Plath finishes the

poem calling God and the Devil and warning them, to fore-shadow a big event that is coming;

which could be Plath’s third attempt at suicide.

The final Plath poem, Daddy 3 (1962) , is a personal ‘rage’ from Plath towards men, and male

dominance. The poem is believed to be a direct response to the betrayal Plath felt from her late

father, who died due to diabetes after her eighth birthday (Academy of American Poets, 2017).

The speaker, creates a figurative image of a father, who is depicted as a devil, and a Nazi which

is a direct parallel to Plath’s life, whose father who supported German regime during Plath’s

life (Alberge, 2012). The speaker identifies herself as the victim and a Jew, repeating the phrase

through stanza 7 and 8. In Line 30, the speaker uses a train to symbolize the speaker being

taken off to a concentration camp, as was done in World War Two by the Nazis. The phrase,

“chuffing me off like a Jew” metaphorically mirrors just how neglected Plath felt by the death

of her father. Towards the end of the poem, the speaker takes revenge on her father and the

man she married. Although it is particularly targeting these two men, it is also an attack on men

as a whole, and the patriarchal society in which Plath was brought up. Towards the end of the

poem, the speaker exclaims that the reason for her depression and coldness was due to her