Plath's Obsession In Aritel

Sylvia Plath, who has advanced the development of the Confessional Poetry to its greatest height, is claimed as the greatest American woman poet since Emily Dickinson. As the most ingenious among the Confessional Poets, she became a cult figure after her suicide at the age of thirty and has been of intense critic concern for several decades, because of not only her poetic excellence, but also her black uniqueness-both her art and life are characteristic of an overwhelming obsession with death. As the nicknamed "artist of death" has labeled death her hallmark, what is contained, and what cause lies, in her black art? This thesis explores Plath's consciousness of death through a close reading of the death poetry, Plath's masterpiece Ariel, from the perspective of Freud's instinct theory.This paper consists of five parts. First goes a brief introduction of Plath's black uniqueness and her Ariel. Chapter One is a detailed analysis of "death", both the leading theme and the central image in Ariel. Chapter Two deals with the theme of life, which underlies the pervasive death. The conflict between the life and death instinct, manifested by the conflictive coexistence of many opposing forces, is analyzed in Chapter Three, in which the cause for the unbalance of the conflict is elaborated in particular. The conclusion states the revelation provided by Ariel: Plath's obsession with death, the embodiment of the power of Thanatos which eventually excels Eros in the conflict, stems from not only her personal suffering but also the shared cultural crisis; her black art has given an extreme example and uttered the repressed voice of death in this tragic age.