The
peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see
Them
unwrap me hand and foot--
The
big strip tease.
Gentlemen,
ladies
These
are my hands My knees.
I
may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.”
This
was a couple of stanzas that really stuck out to me in Sylvia Plath's
poem “Lady Lazarus.” For starters, what does this particular part
mean to you? The way I perceived it is that she is obviously being
viewed at as if she was a specimen under a microscope. She felt that
everyone was there to judge her, and label her as the “girl who
tried to kill herself.” I also feel like with this she feels as if
no one genuinely cares. Everyone is just interested in being within
the loop, and is interested in knowing everything that is going on
rather than actually caring about her health and wellness. I feel
like that is another aspect as to why she doesn't want to live. For
most of her life she has been neglected, and we learned about that in
her poem “Daddy.” It is assumed that no one seemed to really care
before, so why would people begin to care now?
When the Speaker mentions the "peanut Crunching crowd" I imagine her at a circus or carnival and that she is the main attraction (Plath 26). She has this burden of everyone wanting to come in to see her as the main attraction. I’m just wondering what this says about herself? Does she feel like she is losing control of her body and that her body and all its emotions are being put on display?
ReplyDeleteWhen she says "What a million filaments" I picture her thinking of herself as if she is falling into a millions little pieces of strands just waiting to be put back together (Plath 25). But instead of being put back together, she is torn even more apart in front of the crowd. Her analogy of the circus/carnival is interesting to me because most people who are involved are looked upon as being freaks or abnormal. A few lines down she says “I rocked shut, as a seashell” showing readers how she is trying so had to shut the world out, but also that it is difficult because she is being watching by this “peanut crunching crowd” (Plath 39-40).
When she describes everyone else's reaction to her suicide attempts as "unwrap[ping] [her] hand and foot--The big strip tease," I saw her trying to express that with every suicide, like with every piece of clothing in a strip tease, there was more excitement and response from the “crowd” (Plath 28-29). A strip tease is meant to be fun and entertainment for its audience. It is interesting that she chose to compare her list of tragedies to a strip tease. Along with the idea that during a strip tease the performer becomes more and more bare, after each suicide she became more vulnerable and her fake top layers were stripped away for everyone to see her true unhappiness. This goes along with the idea that she is just a show to an audience that tells her they care about her. It’s as if the audience at a strip club tells the performer “we are here just to support you through this performance,” when the true reason is for personal joy and intrigue.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Plath was trying to show how little people care about victims of a tragedy and that they’re just another spectacle to behold. I Especially like Joline’s comment when she analyzes the use of carnival images:
ReplyDelete“Her analogy of the circus/carnival is interesting to me because most people who are involved are looked upon as being freaks or abnormal”
But other thoughts about people’s reaction to tragedy began entering my mind. Even if people were genuinely concerned for a person and truly tried to empathize with them, how would they be able to if they haven’t been in the same situation themselves? How could a person not come off as insincere if they haven’t been to the brink? Though a person could really care, they could only pretend to understand what a victim is going through.