Source: Genius “Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve got a call.” Introduction
Poem’s Name - Lady Lazarus
Poet’s Name - Sylvia Plath
Genre - Confessional Poetry
Collected in - Ariel, 1965
Language - English
Synopsis
Lady Lazarus, a character that resembles the poet in many ways, is the title of the poem as well as its speaker. The poem begins with her confession that she has done “it” once more. At first, there isn’t much for the reader to deduce from as to what this “it” is. But soon we realize that the narrator is talking about her suicide attempts.
She has tried once every 10 years to kill herself. The first was when she was 10 which was actually an accident, the second was when she was twenty and the third is now when she is thirty. She says she’s like a cat that has nine lives since she keeps coming back to life after killing herself every single time.
The narrator says that dying is an art and she excels at it. She considers it a theatrical performance and people gather to watch her do it while munching on peanuts. It almost seems like she’s putting on the “act” of her third death in a circus or carnival in front of these people.
By the end, she says that her biggest enemy is the doctor that keeps saving her even though she just wants to die. In the end, she says that when she is saved this third time, she’ll rise out of those ashes like a phoenix and devour all men.
About the Poet
Source: BBC
Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was a poet, novelist, and short-story writer born in Boston, Massachusetts. She is noted for popularising confessional poetry, and her most well-known works are The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965), as well as The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical book published soon before her death in 1963.
The Collected Poems, which includes previously unreleased works, was published in 1981. Plath was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982 for this book, making her the fourth person to receive the prize posthumously. ‘Lady Lazarus’ along with many of her noted works, was written during the last 3 years of her life when she experienced a burst of productivity.
Source: The Sun
Plath was chronically depressed for the majority of her adult life and was treated with electroconvulsive therapy several times. She tried to commit suicide many times and at last, in 1963, was successful. She stuck her head in the oven with the gas on and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The anxiety, confusion, and suicidal thoughts she experienced are painfully evident in her works.
Psychological Analysis
‘Lady Lazarus’ is a complex and gloomy poem, widely regarded as one of Plath’s best poems, and has received a great deal of critical attention. It's widely assumed that it's a reflection of Plath's suicidal attempts and inclinations. Plath, using the themes of death and resurrection, delivers a dark glimpse into the suicidal mentality, as well as a critique of society’s perverted fetish with others’ pain and suffering and the agony of being a woman in a patriarchal society.
The title of the poem is a biblical reference to Lazarus, a man Jesus brought back from the dead. She compares herself to him, telling the reader that she has died several times and that she is dead as the poem begins. The speaker, however, is repeatedly restored back to life. Lazarus’ resurrection was a pleasant event for him, as resurrections generally are.
However, the narrator defies expectations by stating that it is her wish to die. As a result, the speaker perceives the actions of people who want to help her—whether loved ones or doctors—as selfish, dominating activities carried out against her desires.
The poem is written from the perspective of a woman living in a patriarchal society, and the speaker blames her misery on the men whom she sees as subjugating her. She says that it's the men who continuously bring her back to life implying how little authority women can ever expect to have in a patriarchal system.
The use of the themes of death and resurrection then serves to demonstrate the thirst of society to dominate women completely, from their lives to their bodies. This is also one of the reasons the speaker wishes to die since killing herself is, paradoxically, the only way she can exert some influence over her own life.
The speaker states sarcastically that “dying is an art, like everything else,” and continually portrays her pain as a performance for an eager audience. To put it in simple terms, the poem is a scathing indictment of society’s sick infatuation with other people’s misery. Her pain and suffering are just foddered for the amusem*nt of the “peanut-crunching crowd” or ‘popcorn-munching crowd’ in modern terms.
Summing Up
'Lady Lazarus' is a perfect representation of one's inner desolation and loneliness. Being a confessional poem, it's a really personal poem about the speaker's psychology, trauma, and extreme times in her life. It delves into the topic of suicide and how it connects to larger social issues.
It's almost unbearably painful when you think about how this poem, amongst her other works, was essentially a suicide letter, a cry for help. The obvious relations between the poem and Sylvia Plath’s real-life make it all the more somber.
My ratings for the poem - 4.5 on 5
Written By - Sanjana Chaudhary
