On The Life Images In Sylvia Plath’s Poems

As one of the most prominent confessional poets in the literary history of the United States of America, Sylvia Plath manifests unique individual personality in her poetry, whose poetic life and life poetics have once been the focus of literary criticism. This thesis attempts to explore Sylvia Plath’s consciousness of life through a close reading of her poetry from the perspective of Sigmund Freud’s personality and instinct theory.This thesis aims not only to demonstrate the thrilling charms of Sylvia Plath’s poems, but also to interpret the inner world of the woman poet. With poetry as the medium, she explores the meaning of life, the realization of individual dreams and values, and the exhilarating rebirth through the extreme attempt of self-destruction.This thesis consists of five parts. The first part introduces Sylvia Plath’s personal life and her poetry, and current researches on her works. This part also deals with the evolvement of imagery in western literary theory and the feasibility of interpreting Plath’s life consciousness with Freud’s psychoanalysis theory.Chapter One,"The Main Life Images in Plath’s Poems", classifies and interprets the predominant images appearing in her poems for they stand for the various states of life, which include nature images, the bees and human images, assuming three layers of implications. As the poet’s subjective creative intuition and objective life experience are fully merged in her poems, we could perceive and appreciate her intense reflection on life consciousness.Chapter Two resolves the process of exploring the spirit of Plath from the perspective of Freud’s personality theory. Plath’s poetry interprets the inner cause of her self-destruction, regarding death as a ritual for rebirth.The conflict between the life and death instinct, manifested by the contradictory coexistence of many opposing forces, is analyzed in Chapter Three, which elaborates Sylvia Plath’s own view of life. With evidence from her poems, we can find something more stable in her poems--her pursuit of the meaning of life. This part also explores the practical significance of the life images in the poems.Conclusion reaffirms the gist of this thesis. This part draws the main conclusion of the whole thesis, summarizes the major findings, raises some implications based on the analysis and emphasizes its significance in modern world. The entire thesis, on the basis of close reading, probes into Sylvia Plath’s strong contemplation on life consciousness reflected in her poetry demonstrated by the different states of life-living and suicide, rebirth and struggling. The social pressure combined with painful personal experiences that make modern people disorientated and depressed cannot be eliminated at all but can be weakened by effort. Plath’s life consciousness manifested in her poetry creates new life impulses for human beings and constructs a new life value, which embodies the great power and the strong will to live.