Metaphor

While reading Sylvia Plath’s poem, Metaphors, I became interested in her choice of words as well as the structure of the poem. Knowing that there are nine lines, each with nine syllables, I thought that despite these restrictions that better words could have better defined a woman’s pregnancy. What I mean by “better” is that the words she had chosen are not happy words. To compare a woman’s pregnant body to an elephant or a ponderous house, in my opinion, is not meant to be lighthearted, and it doesn’t describe someone who would be enjoying her pregnancy. The poem just struck me as being sorrowful, and each time I re-read it, I kept trying to understand how she felt during her pregnancy. I wanted to know more about Sylvia Plath.
In searching for information about her, I was not surprised to find that she suffered from depression and ended her own life. The saddness of this poem now is that the child she had carried for nine months within her no longer has a mother. Sylvia Plath left behind two young children at the time of her early death.

Submitted by Natalie McCann