Cut by sylvia Plath Essay -- essays research papers

â€Å"Cut† Sylvia Plath Persona In terms of content the persona in â€Å"Cut† is Sylvia Plath herself. Plath was one of the first American women writers to refuse to conceal her true emotions. In articulating her aggression, hostility and despair in her art, she effectively challenged the traditional literary prioritization of female experience. Plath has experienced much melancholy and depression in her life. Scenario The scenario of the poem starts off in a seemingly domestic scene, perhaps preparing for dinner and develops into this amazing association and blurring of the physical and emotional senses, where a great joy has been found in an ‘accident’. Plath dedicates â€Å"Cut† to her new au pair (nanny), Susan O’Neill Roe as a â€Å"welcome to the family† gesture. It is most likely the au pairs thumb, which has been cut however Plath refers to it as her own thumb as a sign of empathy/psychosis. In the poem, Plath describes the feelings and sensations of deliberate self mutilation and the emotional release it brings. The cutting of the thumb can be viewed in a Freudian manner in which the incident occurred accidentally â€Å"on purpose† a parapraxis, having the effect of building up tension. Context The context in which the poem is taking place is in England, isolated away from all her family and friends, during the 1950's where Plath was the victim of a male-orientated sexist society and her poetry a choreography of female wounds. Values portrayed through â€Å"Cut† are Plath’s life of hardships from separation, divorce and as a single mother and poet. Through the remarkable consistent images that all â€Å"flow† from her very ordinary â€Å"accident† it is evident that this poem showcases a history of bloodshed through war, death, injury and maiming in the Western world and Plath’s family history Story The story of â€Å"Cut† is a rapid succession/conglomeration off sensations and images of violence and bloodshed throught history and its emotional relief. Plath chooses to use an ongoing metaphor of a battle between two armies. She is possibly one soldier who has lost much, while fighting the depression battle. This poem demonstrates Plath’s disconnection from humanity as for example she disassociates the thumb as being part of the body. The fact that she relates her cut to onions, with cooking as a household duty displaying her discontentment with her role as a housewife and mot... ...rill-â€Å" creates a colloquial level of language, where in this case an exclamation mark could have been used. Sounds A variety of language devices are employed to create tone for the poem. Sounds such as assonance is used in the line â€Å"a flap like a hat† with an emphasis on ‘t’ and taken off on ‘a’ coupled with dental ‘t’ and plosive ‘p’ evoking and mirroring the on/off nature of a hat, in reference to the skin that has been cut on her thumb. Internal assonance and consonance appear and disappear with unpredictability. This demonstrates signs of Plath’s mental illness. Also there is assonance in â€Å"little pilgrim, the Indian’s axed your scalp† where the chopping sounds evoke the movement. In conclusion, there is more than one implication of the word alone â€Å"cut† [hurt,injured,rejected,excluded]these are to mean: physically injured, rejected or wounded by people, excluded by living on own and bleeding in all senses and self mutilation. In the poem â€Å"Cut† by Sylvia Plath there is more to the poem than moods and feelings through the use of context and technique. For instance images,sounds,tones,rhythm,rhyme and form which all add up to an effective poem with textual integrity.