Sylvia Plath
...can’t. When she looks at the picture she is reminded of the pain she is bringing them by being in the hospital. She then writes “I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.” She wants to die, she didn’t want anyone to get her anything because that would show that they cared about her. She then starts referring to the tulips, “The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me… They concentrate my attention.” She says this because the tulips are making her focus on them and she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want to have any feelings or emotions, she wants to be numb and die. I found the poem “Lady Lazarus” a little disturbing. This is obviously about her attempted suicides and her suicidal thoughts. It seems she has tried to kill herself once every ten years, “I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it-.” When I read that the skin of some Jewish victims of the Holocaust was made into lampshades it made me sick to my stomach. I did not realize that happened. I think she is comparing her skin to this because she feels like her soul is empty and hollow like a lampshade. I thought it was interesting how she compared herself to a cat with “nine times to die.” Then she talks about “This is Number Three. What a trash to annihilate each decade” she said earlier that she was thirty so this is the third decade, suicide number three. She talks about how the second time she tried to commit suicide she meant it and almost succeeded. But the doctors saved her and called it a “miracle”. She then says there is a charge, “For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge” I think she is referring to how she hurts the people who are close to her with her suicide attempts. I’m not really sure. When she says “Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well” this is saying that she thinks she has a talent and is proud of herself. This also shows she will not stop until she succeeds. I also like “Daddy.” It is like she is having a conversation with her dead f...