Daddy by Sylvia Plath | Structure, Summary, Analysis

 

Daddy by Sylvia Plath | Structure, Summary, Analysis

Hello and welcome to the Discourse. ‘Daddy’ is perhaps Sylvia Plath’s best-known poem. The poem was first published in Ariel in 1965 and later included in The Collected Poems in 1981. Plath wrote "Daddy" on October 12, 1962, shortly after separating from her husband, Ted Hughes. This period was marked by intense emotional turmoil for her. It is a powerful and complex poem that delves into themes of male authority, trauma, and the struggle for identity. Told from the perspective of a woman addressing her father, the memory of whom has an oppressive power over her, the poem details the speaker's struggle to break free of his influence. The poem explores the deification and mythologizing of authority figures, particularly the speaker's father. It reflects on the speaker's complex feelings towards her father, combining love and resentment.  Sylvia Plath lost her father at a very young age.

The speaker begins by idolizing her father and presenting him as the most important figure in her past. The speaker expresses her anger as a woman who felt oppressed by her parents' expectations of her, society's hindering roles in place for women, and her ex-husband's unfaithfulness. The struggle to break free from the shadow of her father's influence is a central theme. In the poem, the speaker alludes to the toxic male authority symbolized by her father, comparing ‘Daddy’ to a Nazi soldier. The poet uses Holocaust imagery to symbolize the pain and terror of oppression that she as a female felt in the patriarchal setup. In addition, the poet also uses other violent myths and history, including those of Electra, vampirism, and voodoo. In the end, the speaker alludes to her marriage as a continuation of the struggle and oppression.

Structure of Daddy:

The poem has 90 lines set in 16 quintains (five-line stanzas). However, there is no other specific pattern or form for the poem, that is poem is written in free-verse quintains. The regularity of stanza length and short lines suggests a weird nursery rhyme. Plath has used irregular meter for the poem. The meter is roughly tetrameter, four beats, but also uses pentameter with a mix of stresses (iambs, anapests, trochee). The poet has used enjambment, end-stopped lines, metaphor, simile, imagery, symbolism, allusion, apostrophe, onomatopoeia, repetition, and alliteration in the poem.

Summary of Daddy:

Stanza 1 Lines 1-5

“You do not do, you do not do   

Any more, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot   

For thirty years, poor and white,   

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.”

The speaker begins with an apostrophe as she directly addresses her father (whom she lost when she was eight). The speaker says that for 30 years, she has been living trapped inside the memory of her father, but now she will get rid of it. She uses metaphor to compare the oppressive dominance of her father (or his memories) over her with a ‘black shoe.’ Inside a tight shoe, it is dark and there is no air. While a shoe is expected to protect the foot, a tight shoe may cause trouble and aches. The speaker is not wearing that shoe though, she feels as if she is living in it, trapped, in the dark, bearing the weight of her whole existence. The speaker says after 30 years, she will no longer be trapped in the memory of her father. The speaker feels that the poverty, ill condition, fear, and inability to breathe, or sneeze (Achoo) are all due to his father’s oppressive dominance over her which still lingers. Achoo is an example of onomatopoeia. The poet used repetition in the very first line and when repetition is so close, it is termed epizeuxis.

The metaphor ‘black shoe’ and the image of the speaker living in a black shoe alludes to the popular nursery rhyme "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe."

Stanza 2 Lines 6-10

“Daddy, I have had to kill you.   

You died before I had time——

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,   

Ghastly statue with one gray toe   

Big as a Frisco seal”

In line 6, the speaker directly addresses her father as Daddy (apostrophe). The speaker reveals the extent of oppression she might have felt as she declares that had he not died, she would have killed him. She explains that she did not have time to kill her father, because he died before she could manage to do it. The speaker uses metaphor to express that her father was God to her. However, he was a heavy, huge statue (of God) with no feelings for her. Sylvia’s father suffered diabetic gangrene and one of his feet was amputated. She describes the remaining toe as a seal, suggesting how enormous and overbearing her father seemed to her. He was hardened, without feelings, and now that he is dead, she thinks he looks like an enormous, ominous statue. The speaker uses hyperbole to show how small and insignificant she feels to her father who has taken up her entire life. She compares him to a statue that has overtaken all of the United States. For her, her father, or his memories are larger than life. He is also evil. 

Stanza 3 Lines 11-15

“And a head in the freakish Atlantic   

Where it pours bean green over blue   

In the waters off beautiful Nauset.   

I used to pray to recover you.

Ach, du.”

In this stanza, the speaker reveals that for her, her father was her whole world. She continues the metaphor of the statue of God. The statue's head is in the Atlantic, on the coast at Nauset Beach, Cape Cod, where the Plath family used to holiday. The father icon stretches across the USA. She mentions how earnestly she prayed for her father’s recovery as a kid. The last line is a German phrase, meaning ‘Oh, you.’ Her father was a German immigrant to the USA.

Stanza 4 Lines 16-20

“In the German tongue, in the Polish town   

Scraped flat by the roller

Of wars, wars, wars.

But the name of the town is common.   

My Polack friend”

In this stanza, the poet remembers her father came from a Polish town, where German was the main language spoken. She explains that the town he grew up in had endured one war after another. She alludes to the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. She mentions that she would never be able to identify which specific town her father was from because the name of his hometown was common. She learned this from her Polack friend.

Stanza 5 Lines 21-25

“Says there are a dozen or two.   

So I never could tell where you   

Put your foot, your root,

I never could talk to you.

The tongue stuck in my jaw.”

The speaker continues to explain what her friend from Poland has said. There are more than a dozen towns by the same name in Poland. So she can't ascertain which specific town her father was from. All this information she gathered from her friend as she never had a talk with her father. The speaker hints at a lack of communication, instability, and paralysis due to fear of her father, she just couldn’t converse with her father. He was so strict and terrifying,

Stanza 6 Lines 26-30

“It stuck in a barb wire snare.   

Ich, ich, ich, ich,

I could hardly speak.

I thought every German was you.   

And the language obscene”

The speaker continues to remember how fearful she felt whenever she was with her father during her childhood. Whenever she tried to speak, she stumbled and continued to repeat ‘ich, ich, ich,… which is the German word for ‘I’. She was unable to communicate with him. She explains that despite being her father, he was nothing specific for her and she felt as if every German was her father, strict, harsh, and obscene.

Stanza 7 Lines 31-35

“An engine, an engine

Chuffing me off like a Jew.

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.   

I began to talk like a Jew.

I think I may well be a Jew.”

In this stanza, the speaker alludes to the ‘death trains’ (engine, engine) taking her off to a Nazi concentration camp where millions of Jews were cruelly tortured, gassed, and cremated during World War II. "Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen", were concentration camps where Jews were worked to death, starved, and murdered. She uses a simile to make the connection more prominent, saying "I began to talk like a Jew. / I think I may well be a Jew". The speaker associates her fear and terror of her father with the struggle of the Jewish people against the Nazis.

Stanza 8 Lines 36-40

“The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna   

Are not very pure or true.

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck   

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack

I may be a bit of a Jew.”

In these lines, the speaker mentions how her father had a strict code of morality, purity, and behavior. The white snow and the clear beer contrast starkly with the dark deeds inflicted by Nazis in the name of racial purity. The speaker is consciously, and deliberately choosing sides. The speaker identifies not only with Jews but also with gypsies. In fact, she seems to identify with anyone who has ever felt oppressed by the Germans. In the last line of the stanza, the speaker suggests that she is probably part Jewish and part Gypsy.

Stanza 9 Lines 41-45

“I have always been scared of you,

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.   

And your neat mustache

And your Aryan eye, bright blue.

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——”

The speaker continues the allusion to Nazi German as her father and admits that she has always been afraid of him. "Luftwaffe" is the German air force; "gobbledygoo" is gibberish or a childlike word that conveys her disdain for the German. This implies that the speaker feels that her father and his language made no sense to her. In this instance, she felt afraid of him and feared everything about him. She calls herself a Jew and her father a Nazi killer. He was Aryan, with blue eyes. He was something fierce and terrifying to the speaker. A Panzer-man means a German tank driver.

Stanza 10 Lines 46-50

“Not God but a swastika

So black no sky could squeak through.   

Every woman adores a Fascist,   

The boot in the face, the brute   

Brute heart of a brute like you.”

Sylvia’s father was never a Nazi. Yet, he was a male and she suffered oppressive male authority. In the second stanza, she compares her father to God, here she asserts that he was not God but a German swastika, another symbol of oppression.  The swastika was so big it blacked out the entire sky, or the speaker’s whole world. In the next lines, the speaker expresses the helplessness of women in general. Men are fascist, oppressive, and brute while women are oppressed victims. Yet, they are expected to adore their men. Perhaps she's saying that in relationships, women are dominated by men. To love a man you must be masochistic. This statement may also be more bitterly sarcastic than true. If it is meant as a statement of fact, it's criticizing women as well as the brutes they love.

Stanza 11 Lines 51-55

“You stand at the blackboard, daddy,   

In the picture I have of you,

A cleft in your chin instead of your foot   

But no less a devil for that, no not   

Any less the black man who”

The speaker describes a photo of her father, and in the picture, he's standing at a blackboard, probably in a classroom, teaching. Sylvia’s father was a biology professor. In the next 3 lines, the speaker compares her father to the devil as she notices the picture. Her father had a cleft on his chin. The devil is often depicted as some sort of animal, like a goat, that has hooves and not feet. Devil is often depicted with a cleft or indent in his feet. Like many other stanzas in the poem, this too ends with an enjambment, a poetic device in which an idea is split between two lines.

Stanza 12 Lines 56-60

“Bit my pretty red heart in two.

I was ten when they buried you.   

At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you.

I thought even the bones would do.”

In this stanza, the speaker expresses her deep affection for her father. While her father had a cleft on his chin, he was no less than the devil with a cleft on his feet. She loved him so much that losing him bit her heart in two. Though she loved him, he was no less a cruel man. She depicts her father as huge, evil, and black (opposite of light or innocence), while her heart is pretty red, and a victim. Sylvia’s father died when she was a little more than 8, however, in the poem she mentions she was ‘ten’ when her father died and was buried. Ten years later, when she was twenty, she attempted to die as well. She confesses that the reason she attempted suicide was to get back to her father. She thought that even if she was never to see him again in the afterlife, simply having her bones buried by his bones would be enough of a comfort to her. The speaker repeats ‘back’ three times (epizeuxis), the repetition here emphasizes her futile desperation.

Stanza 13 Lines 61-65

“But they pulled me out of the sack,   

And they stuck me together with glue.   

And then I knew what to do.

I made a model of you,

A man in black with a Meinkampf look”

Though she tried to kill herself to be with her father even in death, the doctors didn’t let her die, she was pulled back. Though she was broken and lost, the doctors helped her regain but someone who has been glued back together wouldn't ever feel quite right again. To fill the void, she tried to make a model of his father. She decided to have a substitute for her father, probably by finding a real man whom she imagines is like her father. This substitute, the other man is like her father. She doesn’t describe him as black but says that she is a man in black. Though this new man may not have a mustache, he appears like a Hitler, a Nazi (Meinkampf look).

Stanza 14 Lines 66-70

“And a love of the rack and the screw.   

And I said I do, I do.

So daddy, I’m finally through.

The black telephone’s off at the root,   

The voices just can’t worm through.”

This man is a sadist, wears black, and looks like Hitler and she succumbs to his torture because she longs for her father. The speaker finally fulfills her Electra complex.  Basically, the Electra complex is a theory that women seek men who are like their fathers. She marries him, confirming her wedding vows, "I do." So now, she no longer needs her father. She cuts off communication with him, the dead, here. The father and daughter can no longer communicate.

Stanza 15 Lines 71-75

“If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——

The vampire who said he was you   

And drank my blood for a year,

Seven years, if you want to know.

Daddy, you can lie back now.”

The speaker again asserts her willingness to kill her father but now she says that she has killed two men. It is figurative. She’s killed anyone in reality, but killing here means ending ties, getting rid of, becoming independent, and free of oppression. But who is the second man she has killed? The second man is the man that she modeled after her father and married, and now they are divorced. This second man, her husband is like Hitler, and a vampire, who kept sucking her blood for a year, while they were going through the ordeal of separation. Then she mentions that she has been exploited by him for seven years. A vampire drinking blood is a metaphor for her husband who has been draining her life away, like a vampire would drain his victim's blood. Maybe she thought he was only cruel to her for one year, but upon further thought, she realizes that he's really been cruel for seven, which could be the totality of their marriage or acquaintance. After asserting that she's killed both her father and the man she married (who reminded her of him), she tells her father to lie back, or relax, or accept his defeat.

Stanza 16 Lines 76-80

“There’s a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.   

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”

The speaker is addressing the part of her father that is in herself, his memories, and her love for her – to lie back because he's dead. Her cruel father, the devil, Nazi, Hitler, a vampire, has lived past his physical death. He kept sucking her will to live but he must die for good now, or his effect on her must diminish. To do so, a stake has been pushed through his black heart, like a vampire should be killed. She has exorcized or mentally killed him properly this time. In this stanza, the speaker alludes to Bram Stoker’s Dracula in which vampires lived near little villages and hunted the villagers. As he is dead now, the villagers are dancing. They always knew that the vampire was her father, causing all sorts of problems and mysterious disappearances in the village.

In the last line, the speaker asserts her independence from the memories and gloominess because of her father.

In the whole poem of 80 lines, the speaker uses the word ‘Daddy’ six times, twice in the last line, making a stress that now she is free of the bad memories, now she won’t be exploited anymore.

So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of American English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards.

Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Structure, Summary, Analysis

 

Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Kubla Khan is one of the most popular and appreciated poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge that he wrote in 1797. The poem was first published in 1816 in a pamphlet along with his other poems, Christabel, and The Pains of Sleep. The subtitle of Kubla Khan is "A Vision in a Dream". Coleridge also used another subtitle ‘A Fragment’. Coleridge saw a dream and when he woke up, he began writing his dream in poetic verse. However, he was interrupted before he could complete and by the time he returned to writing, he forgot the rest of the dream, hence, ‘A Fragment.’ The poem is offered as a dream, a poetic dream removed from any intellectual content, but offering the essence of a dream. The enchanting vivacity of its color, artistic beauty, and sweet harmony appear like a dream.

As a child, Samuel Taylor Coleridge got addicted to opium when he used an opium-based medicine Laudanum to get rid of pain due to an injury. He continued using Laudanum to treat depression and stress and failed to get rid of the addiction. One night in 1797, he was suffering pain and to ease it out, he took a dose of laudanum. He fell asleep and had a strange dream about a Mongol emperor named Kubla Khan. Coleridge dreamed that he was actually writing a poem in his sleep, and when he woke up after a few hours, he sat down to write the dream poem. Coleridge had this dream of Kubla Khan (or Kublai Khan) because before he fell asleep, he was reading Purchas, his Pilgrims, a book by Renaissance historian Samuel Purchas. The book briefly describes Xanadu, the summer capital of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan. Coleridge mentioned this source of inspiration in his preface to Kubla Khan. Samuel Purchas never visited Xanadu but his description of Xanadu was based on the writings of Marco Polo who visited Xanadu in 1275.

The main theme of the poem is the interaction between nature and man as the speaker highlights the limits of man’s creativity. The poem celebrates the power of human creativity while also recognizing that such creativity is limited, fragile, and quickly lost.  The poem’s dreamlike, hallucinatory tone invites the reader to treat the speaker’s descriptions as an allegory for creativity and the human mind. In the poem, he explores the depths of dreams and creates landscapes that could not exist in reality. The “sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice” exemplifies the extreme fantasy of the world in which Kubla Khan lives. While the speaker describes Kubla Khan’s pleasure dome, not everything is pleasurable in the landscape. Along with the harmonious, beautiful, and pleasing aspects of nature, the poem also depicts the dangerous and threatening aspects of nature, which suggests that for Kubla Khan, pleasure constitutes not only natural beauty but also the violent aspects of nature. The speaker suggests that pleasure does not exclude violence, rather, pleasure emerges from the tension between beauty and violence, or chaos. In “Kubla Khan,” nature is characterized by a rough, dangerous terrain that can only be tamed by a male explorer such as Kubla Khan.

Structure of Kubla Khan:

The poem consists of 54 lines set in three stanzas of varying length. The first has 11 lines, the second has 25, and the third has 18. The poem doesn’t follow any strict metrical or rhyming pattern. The poet keeps jumping from one metrical pattern to another at different instances in the poem. However, Coleridge mostly used iambs in the poem, that is, most of the words in the poem are two-syllable units, in which the stress is placed on the second syllable. The poet used iambic trimeter, iambic pentameter, and iambic tetrameter. In the beginning stanza, the speaker describes the rushing of the river to the sea while offering a quick overview of the landscape hence, the lines appear fast-moving and short. The poem goes slow in the mid-section and the lines become longer. The speaker describes the meandering winds and the lines meanders too. In the last part, the speaker rushes to conclude and the lines become short again.

The poem has many rhyming patterns without any regularity or order. In general, metrical patterns and rhyming schemes are used in a poem to offer a specific structure, however, the poet used meter and rhyme in this poem to suggest disorder, chaos, and dreamlike effervescence. The varying rhyming schemes add to the mystical, otherworldly nature of the poem. Coleridge used extended metaphor, simile, alliteration, chiasmus, enjambment, allusion, antithesis, parallelism, and personification in the poem.

Summary of Kubla Khan:

Stanza 1 Lines 1-5

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

   Down to a sunless sea.”

The speaker begins by mentioning Xanadu, the real name of a now-ruined site in China on the Mongolian Plateau, which encompasses the once capital city built by Kubla Khan (Kublai Khan), a 13th-century Mongol ruler. The speaker narrates how Kubla Khan ordered a stately pleasure house to be built by the side of the river Alph. Alph is not a real river, rather it declares the beginning of the poet’s vision, or dream. Coleridge chose to name this fictitious river Alph to symbolize nature as the greatest creator, the source of all creations. Alph is a contraction of the Greek alphabet ‘alpha’ which means first, or prime. The speaker describes how this fictional river Alph flowed underground for a long distance through unfathomable caves into a sea where the rays of the sun could not penetrate. The ‘measureless’ caves and ‘sunless sea’ symbolize darkness, or absence of light, or reason. This suggests that the speaker is interested in reason or nature, as much as he is interested in supernatural, mystical, sleep, or death.

Alliteration has been used in line 1 (the sound of K in Kubla Khan) and line 2 (the sound of d in dome and decree).

Stanza 2 Lines 6-11

“So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.”

After mentioning the ‘measureless’ caves and ‘sunless sea’, the speaker talks about the exact measurements required for fulfilling the order of Kubla Khan to make the ‘pleasure-dome.’ A piece of fertile land ‘twice five miles’ or 5 miles on the riverside and 5 miles on the other side was enclosed with walls and towers all around. There are gardens and snaky channels of water (sinuous rills) running through. Exotic trees grow here, bearing incense (aromatic fragrances). Ancient forests are present, too, with sunlit clearings.

The speaker offers a contrasting mixture of reality and imagination while describing the ‘pleasure-dome’ in Xanadu. The landscape encloses both, the rational, measurable, and sunlit spots of greenery, and the irrational, immeasurable, deep caves, sunless sea, and dark ancient forests.

In line 9, the speaker describes ‘incense-bearing’ trees blossoming recently in the man-made garden while in line 10, he describes the natural ‘ancient’ forests, suggesting the forests have been for a long time. This inversion of time, or contrast suggests Chiasmus.

Stanza 2 Lines 12-19

“But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:”

While describing the beautiful artificial garden, sunlit spots of greenery, and the natural ancient dark forests, the speaker notices the deep dark chasm (a deep crack or canyon in the ground). The river Alph cascades down the side of one of these hills, cutting a "deep chasm," or canyon, through it. The chasm symbolizes the unfathomable strength of the river flow. The chasm appears clear because the whole of the hill is covered in cedar trees while the canyon is the dividing line. The powerful and violent river adds to the mysterious aspect of the landscape which appears an enchanted place haunted by demons. The chasm adds to the savageness of the area. It is dark and the moon too is waning or diminishing. The place is haunted, dangerous, and beautiful too at the same time. It appears as if the beautiful woman is crying for her lover, who is a demon. The speaker is not introducing any new character in these lines, but he is describing the romantic aspect of this seemingly haunted, dangerous, yet attractive landscape where Kubla Khan has chosen to make his pleasure dome. The river continues to flow and hit the ground, deepening the chasm and as the water falls from the hill, the ground bears it while panting. Though a river, a fountain continuously flows, the speaker describes it as if a new mighty force is generated every new moment. Coleridge personifies the earth as a kind of "seething," "breathing" living thing. The rushing water becomes the sound of its "fast thick pants," as if the earth is really tired and defeated.

Stanza 2 Lines 20-27

“Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:

And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,”

The speaker continues to describe the river Alph bursting on the rocks as it falls down the hill. The river is bouncing off the rocks, which splatters the water and reminds the speaker of the clatter of hail, or grain raining down out of the air as it is being separated from the chaff. All this imagery offered by Coleridge is meant to incite a sense of awe and reverence towards the wild natural force symbolized by Alph.

As the water falls, it begins to ease and settle, and then the river "meander with a mazy motion." The whole imagery suggests that the water is falling fast and furiously down the hill into the chasm. The river is rushing down a deep canyon cut into a wooded hillside. It appears the hill is not too high and that is why the water bounces off rocks and creates a tumultuous, chaotic atmosphere, and then the river flows gently, meandering through wood and dale until it reaches the caves of immeasurable dark, deep caves. Momently, miles, meandering, mazy, motion, measureless, all shows alliteration.

Stanza 2 Lines 28-36

“And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;

And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

   The shadow of the dome of pleasure

   Floated midway on the waves;

   Where was heard the mingled measure

   From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!”

The river flows gently for a while and then it falls or sinks down into the ‘sunless’, ‘lifeless’ ocean. The speaker hasn’t mentioned the protagonist yet but now he does. He hears the echoing of the tumultuous river as it falls down the hill and then observes it sinking down the lifeless ocean and this reminds him of the violent wars of the past as he hears  "Ancestral voices prophesying war.” Kublai Khan was the grandson of Genghis Khan. Obviously, he had seen a lot of violence and war. This voice, that Kubla Khan hears, suggests that chaos, tumult, or violence can be a necessity to create something grand such as the ‘pleasure-dome’ decreed by Kubla Khan.

The speaker then describes the ‘pleasure-dome’ which appears to cast a shadow on the river as it falls down the hill to the chasm to meet the lifeless ocean. The speaker says that the reflection of the pleasure-dome fell between the fountains mingling with the echoing sound coming out of the caves creating for the onlooker an illusion of really rhythmical music. The top of the building was warm because it was open to the sun while the low-lying chambers were chilled with never-melting ice. The poem continues to express the deep contrast between the dome and the caverns: Natural vs. man-made, above ground and below ground, symmetrical and irregular, measurable and immeasurable, sunny and frozen.

Stanza 3 Lines 37-44

“A damsel with a dulcimer

   In a vision once I saw:

   It was an Abyssinian maid

   And on her dulcimer, she played,

   Singing of Mount Abora.

   Could I revive within me

   Her symphony and song,

   To such a deep delight ’twould win me,”

Coleridge mentioned in the preface that he was interrupted while writing the poem after he finished the first two stanzas. He was forced to go away from his writing desk and by the time he returned back, he had lost the memories of his vision. The speaker then mentions yet another dream he once had. In this vision, he introduces a muse, an Abyssinian damsel playing the dulcimer, an ancient instrument with strings that are plucked or hit with a mallet to produce music. The girl was playing music on her dulcimer while singing about Mount Abora. It is another fictional name (just like the river Alph) that can be considered as an allusion to Mount Amara, a place that John Milton mentioned in Paradise Lost. The music in his dream was so enchanting that he still remembers how it made him feel. Though he describes the music, he can't really get back to experiencing that intense feeling, yet he longs for it. He wishes to experience the same hypnotic effect of that music. Why does the speaker wish to experience the same enchanting effect of the music of the damsel with a dulcimer?

Stanza 3 Lines 45-54

“That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.”

The speaker wants to revive the music from his vision and bring it back to life because he believes that music is so enchanting and powerful that if he hears it again,  it will inspire him, and he will be able to create his own amazing things. He will make loud and long music and then he will reproduce the ‘pleasure-dome’ of Kubla Khan in the air. He wishes to recreate the sunny dome on the icy rocks and caves. All those who will hear the music will be able to see the pleasure-dome of the speaker too. However, despite the enchanting atmosphere of the ‘pleasure-dome’ it has its own dread and chaos. Those who could see it will warn others about the demon that haunts the dome. The onlookers will warn others while describing this strange terrifying creature with "flashing eyes" and "floating hair." They warn that anyone hearing the song of the Abyssinian damsel must perform a ritual to avoid the demon who has fed the honey-dew and has drunk the milk of Paradise. Who is this terrifying figure? Is he the same demon-lover for whom the woman in the speaker’s dream was wailing? Or is he the speaker, and hence, the poet Coleridge himself in effect of opium? Or maybe the demon is Kubla Khan, the violent grandson of violent Gengiz Khan, who has turned into a strange ferocious creature declaring war against the sane world.

So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!

Mirror by Sylvia Plath | Structure, Summary, Analysis

 

Hello and welcome to the Discourse. “Mirror” is a poem by Sylvia Plath that she wrote in 1961 after giving birth to her first child. The poem was published in The New Yorker in 1963 and later on, it was published in her posthumous poetry collection ‘Crossing the Water.’ The theme of the poem is ‘time and appearance.’ The speaker is a mirror who observes an aging woman through its silver and piercing eyes. The woman is troubled by the changes in her physical appearance as she sees aging and decadence. The mirror reminds her of mortality which she fears. The poem also accuses the rigid standards of beauty and youth to which women are often expected to conform. The poem offers an idea of what is important to the female character from the point of view of a mirror, an unbiased speaker. The mirror observes that the very parts of the woman’s body that patriarchal society deems most valuable are also the parts of her that are fading away their glory and attraction. The woman is preoccupied by her reflection reminding the Greek myth of Narcissus, in which a young man grows so transfixed with his own reflection that he dies. It should be noted that Sylvia Plath committed suicide in 1963. The poem also alludes to the fairytale Sleeping Beauty, where the vain, Wicked Queen looks into her mirror to ask, "Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?"

Structure of ‘Mirror’: The poem is written in free verse, which means that it has no set pattern of rhythm or rhyme, not even end rhymes. However, there are internal slant rhymes. The poem has two stanzas of nine lines each. In the first stanza, the mirror introduces itself as the speaker, offering the qualities of a mirror and its unbiased, truthful nature. The second stanza offers an unbiased image of the woman that the mirror sees. The poet has used personification (Mirror is the speaker), symbolism, imagery, metaphor, simile, allusion, enjambment, consonance, and assonance in the poem.

Summary of Mirror:

Stanza 1 Lines 1-4

“I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful‚”

The speaker is the mirror, which describes itself as an unbiased, passive rectangle of silver, glass, and a shiny surface that only tells the truth and has no other purpose. Mirrors have no prior knowledge of anything; they simply are. The mirror uses first person narrative (I) suggesting a direct and straightforward voice. The mirror says it ‘swallows immediately’ whatever it sees, ‘just as it is,’ without embellishment or deception. In the next line, the mirror says that it is not savage, or cruel, it just remains unbiased, and truthful. The mirror neither loves nor hates whatever he sees, he remains free of any preconceived notion, suggesting the non-discriminatory nature of the mirror.

Stanza 1 Lines 5-9

“The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.”

The mirror expresses itself as the eye of god that sees everything that comes into its view. Like an omniscient god, the mirror gets a multi-dimensional view, nothing can deceive the mirror, it sees things as they are. “four cornered’ is a metaphor suggesting that the mirror is aware of all the four dimensions. It also suggests the rectangular shape of the mirror. Most of the time, the mirror "meditates on the opposite wall," as an open-eyed, staring sage, the mirror sits contemplatively. In the next line, the mirror suggests its feminine nature. The mirror says that it has observed the pink wall for so long as if it is a part of its heart. The mirror gives the idea that the person using that mirror is probably a woman. Pink is associated with feminine things, but the connection isn't that clear. In line 8, ‘it’ is the pink wall, and in line 9, ‘us’ refers to the image of the wall, which is the amalgamation of the wall and the mirror. The mirror states that his sage-like steady view is often interrupted by darkness and individuals standing between it and the wall.

Stanza 2 Lines 10-13

“Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.”

In the second stanza, the mirror expresses itself as a still, freshwater lake. It is a metaphor, the mirror becomes deep, reflective water. Like a mirror, the steady surface of a clean lake offers an exact image or reflection. However, the lake is liquid, and so are the tears. The mirror introduces a woman who often sees into the mirror, trying to ascertain herself. Because she's looking at a lake and not a mirror, the woman must bend over to see the reflection of her face.

She looks at the mirror very closely, delving deep into it, trying to search for the beauty and youth that time has robbed her of. The mirror, the lake, is honest and truthful but the woman isn’t satisfied by the truth or she is afraid of it. The mirror mentions more inanimate objects like ‘candles’ and ‘moon’ and calls them ‘liars’ (personification), because their light can warp sight, often hiding people's blemishes and making them appear more beautiful. Unlike the candle or the moon, who deceive, the mirror or the lake, is honest and shows how the woman is. However, the woman prefers light, or the deceivers hiding her aging beauty and blemishes. When the woman is turned away, to look at the lying moon and candles, the mirror is still there, reflecting her back, faithfully showing the truth.

Stanza 2 Lines 14-18

“She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.”

Though the woman prefers the deception or wants them, she realizes the truthfulness of the mirror, and that brings tears to her. But those tears are a reward for the mirror, for expressing the truth, the mirror is unbiased. To ascertain herself, the woman rubs the mirror, to get a clearer, better reflection, but the mirror is truthful. Her agitation, her tears, and her wavering hands may disturb the lake for a while, creating ripples, but soon it settles and the mirror offers the truthful image again. The mirror, and thus, the reflection of the woman, or her appearance is important to her, and as it changes, it brings melancholy, depression, and tears to her. The mirror observes how the glow of the woman is turning into darkness. In the mirror (or lake), the woman has drowned a young girl, herself, she has lost her youth. Every day, she observes the mirror and sees an old woman rising from the lake. The woman's reflection is changing and aging. She sees herself growing into an old woman. Drowning and rising in the lake metaphorically describe aging. Replacing the young girl daily is the face of an old woman, surfacing "like a terrible fish." It is a simile. In her own reflection in this lake, beautiful youth is sinking, and terrible old age is rising.

So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of American English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri | Characters, Summary, Analysis

 

Hello and welcome to the Discourse. The Namesake is the title of the first novel by Jhumpa Lahiri published in 2003. Like her short stories in The Interpreter of Maladies, the central idea of "The Namesake" revolves around identity, belonging, and the immigrant experience or foreignness. The novel intricately explores the life of Gogol Ganguli, the son of Bengali immigrants, as he navigates the complexities of growing up in America while grappling with his cultural heritage. Gogol's name, which connects him to his family's heritage, becomes a source of confusion and conflict as he navigates the complexities of growing up in America while grappling with his cultural heritage. The dynamics within the Ganguli family illustrate the challenges of maintaining cultural ties while adapting to a new environment. As the title suggests, names are significant symbols throughout the novel, representing personal and cultural identity. To grapple with his inner conflicts, Gogol changes his name. This name change reflects his desire to distance himself from his past, leading to deeper questions about self-acceptance. The novel poignantly captures the complexities of navigating multiple identities and the impact of cultural heritage on personal growth. Lahiri's exploration of these themes provides a rich narrative that resonates with anyone who has experienced the challenges of balancing diverse cultural influences.

Characters of The Namesake:

Gogol Ganguli is the protagonist of the novel. He is the son of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli. Growing up in a suburban town in Massachusetts, with intermittent, long trips to Calcutta, Gogol quickly becomes conscious of the difference between his parents’ culture and the world in which he lives. He comes to hate the name Gogol, embarrassed by its unique oddity. When he turns eighteen, before leaving for Yale, he legally changes his name to Nikhil. Ashoke Ganguli is originally from Kolkatta. As a young man, he faced a train crash in India. He survived because he was reading a short story by Nikolai Gogol when the crash occurred, and rescuers saw him move the book in the wreckage. Ashoke moves to America to study fiber optics. He earned his doctorate from MIT and works as a professor in the Boston area. His pet name, by which he is known at home in India, is Mithu. His family arranges his marriage to Ashima. Ashima was raised in Calcutta and married Ashoke having only met him briefly. She moves with him to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and stays in a suburb of Boston to raise her family. She faces difficulties in settling in America because of cultural differences. She tries to maintain her cultural roots by organizing social gatherings of the Indian community in Boston. In India, she is called Monu by her family members. Sonia Ganguli is the younger sister of Gogol and the daughter of Ashima and Ashoke. As a teenager, she struggles with the divide between her American friends and her Indian background and moves to California for college. After her father’s death, she comes back to Ashima to take care of her. She gets romantically involved with Ben, a Jewish-Chinese journalist in Boston. Ruth is an English major at Yale who becomes Gogol’s first girlfriend. She decides to study abroad for a semester at Oxford, and then extends her stay over the summer. After her return, they find that they are not as close as they were before and they break up. Gogol’s second serious girlfriend is Maxine Ratliff, a History graduate from Barnard. She belongs to a rich family. Gogol falls in love with her effortless beauty and elegant, rich lifestyle and moves to live with her at her home. However, he begins feeling for his family after the death of his father and feels that Maxine is an outsider and soon they break up. Maushumi Mazoomdar is a young Indian American girl who grew up in London. She is a PhD student at NYU. While her family wishes her to marry someone of Indian background she romanticizes marrying someone from other cultures. Her parents arrange her marriage with Gogol after Moushumi breaks off an engagement to Graham just before their wedding. Like Gogol, she too struggles with her identity, family background, and surroundings. Because of their similar experiences, they come close. They decide to move to Paris where Maushumi begins an extramarital affair with Dimitri Desjardins, an old crush of Moushumi who works as an adjunct professor of German literature. She divorces Gogol when he comes to know about the affair.

Summary of ‘The Namesake’:

The novel begins in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1968.  Ashoke Ganguly moved to Boston and began graduate school after barely surviving a catastrophic train accident in India. He barely survived the train accident. He was discovered by the rescue party because of the blowing pages of the book he had been reading when the train derailed—a copy of The Collected Stories of Nikolai Gogol. He believes Gogol saved his life in the train accident. 

A few years later, his parents and Ashima’s parents arranged their marriage, and Ashima left Calcutta to join Ashoke in Boston. As the novel begins, Ashima is pregnant. She makes a snack for herself as she contemplates her recent life. Ashima was apprehensive of leaving India to settle in the US but after her marriage, she dutifully did so to accompany her husband. However, her life is not easy. She feels lonely and homesick in America, clinging to letters from her family and devising makeshift Indian recipes with the ingredients she can scrounge together. As Ashima feels labor pains, Ashoke takes her to the hospital where she gives birth to their first child. Ashoke and Ashima want to wait for his grandmother’s letter to suggest a name for their son. However, the doctor suggests that they should choose a nickname for the birth certificate of their son. Ashoke decides to name him “Gogol,” the writer whose book saved Ashoke’s life.

The family settles into life in Cambridge, with Ashima learning to take Gogol around on her errands. As the family prepares for its first trip back to Calcutta, Ashoke and Ashima learn that Ashima’s father has died suddenly. Their trip is shrouded in mourning. Ashima, especially, misses her parents and her home in Calcutta, despite the family’s growing network of Bengali friends in the Boston area.

By 1971, the Gangulis have moved from Harvard Square to a university town outside Boston. After two years in university-subsidized housing, Ashima and Ashoke decide to buy a home. The new house is on Pemberton Road, and there are no Bengali neighbors. On the first day of Gogol's kindergarten, his parents tell the principal, Mrs. Lapidus, that she should call Gogol by his formal name, "Nikhil." But she overhears them referring to him as "Gogol" and asks him what he would like to be called. When he answers "Gogol," it sticks. Ashima gives birth to Gogol's little sister, Sonia, in May. In the next years, Ashoke finds out about the deaths of both his parents and Ashima finds out about the death of her mother. They learn about these deaths by phone call.

Growing up, Gogol gradually realizes that his name is quite unusual, and he really doesn't like that. He doesn't like that at all. Annoyed by the Bengali customs of his parents, Gogol totally embraces American popular culture. On Gogol's fourteenth birthday, his father comes into his room and gives him his birthday present: The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol. Gogol is more interested in listening to the Beatles than looking at the book, and he is unable to appreciate it. Ashoke tries to tell him about the train accident but stops because he realizes Gogol cannot yet understand. Gogol begins his junior year of high school in the fall. His English teacher Mr. Lawson knows about the Russian author Gogol and assigns the class to read one of his short stories, "The Overcoat."

The summer before he leaves to attend college at Yale, Gogol officially changes his name to Nikhil,  but the name Gogol stays forever with him. He meets Ruth, an English major, and they date for a while, although he never introduces her to his parents. The next year, they break up. Gogol takes regular trips home to visit his family in Boston, and on one of these trips, Ashoke tells Gogol the story of the train crash that influenced his choice of Gogol’s name. Gogol asks him if he reminds him of that night that he almost died, and his father says no; he reminds him of "everything that followed."

In 1994, Gogol began working as an architect in New York City. He meets Maxine, whose carefree, intellectual parents represent everything his parents are not. He falls in love with the girl and her family. Her parents, Lydia and Gerald, are incredibly wealthy, and they interact in a casual but intelligent way that is totally opposite the behavior of Gogol's own parents. He begins spending most of his time at their home rather than at his own apartment, and he feels effortlessly incorporated into their lives. Meanwhile, Ashoke is scheduled to go to Ohio to teach at a University for nine months. Ashima calls Gogol to meet them before they leave but Gogol neglects. He visits them for a few minutes while going for lunch with Maxine.

One day, while Ashima was waiting for Ashoke to return home, he called her to inform her that he was facing stomach problems so he went to the hospital. After a few hours, she calls back and comes to know that Ashoke suffered a massive heart attack and died. Gogol travels to Ohio to collect his father’s remains and empty his apartment, then he returns to Boston to grieve with his mother and Sonia. He feels that his father died because of his neglect and is wracked with guilt. Maxine is sympathetic to Ashoke’s death, but she doesn’t understand why Gogol grieves with his family for so long. She tries to approach him but Gogol feels that despite all her goodness, she is an outsider to his family. They break up.

Ashima encourages him to call Moushumi Mazoomdar, the daughter of family friends whom Gogol has grown up around at family parties. She tells him that she moved to Paris to study French literature, and then moved to New York to follow her ex-fiancé, an American named Graham. After the fight that ended their engagement, Moushumi had taken the rest of the semester off from NYU and mourned, finally returning to school in the fall. It was then that she had met Gogol. Gogol and she begin to date seriously. They marry within a year, soon after Gogol’s 30th birthday, in a traditional Bengali ceremony organized by their families. Soon, however, Gogol realizes that he dislikes Moushumi’s friends and her desire to be someone different. Moushumi decides to attend a conference in Paris where she is invited to present a paper on her thesis. Gogol accompanies her on a vacation. Moushumi expresses her longing to live in Paris, but Gogol feels out of place the entire time. Two days after their first wedding anniversary, Moushumi comes across a resume at the university from a man named Dimitri Desjardins whom she had fallen in love with in high school. She meets him and soon develops an extramarital affair. However, she tries to hide it from Gogol. Somehow Gogol comes to know about her extramarital affair and they get divorced.

Ashima is living with Sonia who is having an affair with Ben, a Chinese Jewish journalist. Sonia and Ben have planned to go to Kolkatta to get married in the traditional Indian way. Ashima decides to sell the house and spend six months of each year living in Calcutta, and the other six months living in America with her children, Sonia and Gogol. She arranges for one last Christmas party at the Ganguli house on Pemberton Road. Gogol visits there to help his mother pack up the family home and prepare for her last Christmas Eve party. While packing, Gogol comes across the book of Nikolai Gogol's short stories that his father gave him for his fourteenth birthday. He sees the inscription his father has written inside: "The man who gave you his name, from the man who gave you your name." He takes his time while remembering his father and then begins to read “The Overcoat.”
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of Indian English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!