"Dying is an art, like everything else." - Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus"

Sylvia Plath’s, “Lady Lazarus”, is a poem straight out of the confessional poetry movement. It is a very emotional piece that discusses death and suicide. It is a dark poem and somewhat depressing. I found myself loving this poem and the emotion it conveyed.

            Throughout the poem Plath is discussing death and taking her own life. Although the material is dark the poem to me doesn’t seem like a cry for help. She isn’t reaching out through her poetry in the hopes of being saved. She seems to enjoy the fact that she is trying to kill herself. She is “like the cat [having] nine times to die” (1419). She is talking about how she is on life number three, meaning she’s tried to die 2 other times already but was unsuccessful. Her other attempts led her to laugh at the world around her. She isn’t ashamed of herself. She doesn’t seem to care about how others see her. She doesn’t think she is sick.

“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” (1419)

            I just picture her being forced into getting help in an institution, being brought back to life (Lazarus), but against her wishes. It’s not some show to watch in awe that she was saved. She hasn’t been helped. She is the same woman, wanting to escape this reality.

            Plath describes dying as an art. She does “it exceptionally well”, (1419). It’s something that she is proud of. She sees herself as someone who is dying and as someone who wants to die. She described her own skin to be as “bright as a Nazi lampshade” (1418), which refers to the Nazi death camps making lampshades out of the victims’ skin. These lamps are made out of dead skin, dead see-through skin. Her body parts aren’t important. They are dying away and soon so will her soul.

            She talks about why she goes through what she does.

“I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I’ve a call.” (1419)

            She has a calling for dying. She goes through these suicide attempts (which we know, one was eventually successful), so she can feel reality. She wants to feel death. I think that makes sense. For someone who may have lost touch with reality by going through extensive medical treatments to cure her depression, or even as a great writer may be lost in her own mind, her grip on reality may not be as strong as she is used to. The only way to know for sure what is real and what isn’t is to go through death or a near death experience. Then you can tell what is real and what isn’t. I think that line is the most powerful line in the poem.

“I do it so it feels real”

            It’s sad because you have to imagine the mindset she is in. She is so lost in her own mind and death is the only answer. But it’s also powerful and powering to her. She has the power in her life to distinguish between what is real and what isn’t. Technically, it’s in her hands. Yes there are doctors and family members in her life that are trying to get in the way of what she wants to do. They are putting her in institutions and making her go through painful medical treatments. When really she just wants out. This is why so much anger comes out through the poem. If people would just let her have her own way out, as sad as it may be, then she wouldn’t suffer anymore.

            To me this poem is her longing for the sweet release of death and then finding power in that death. She doesn’t fear death but rather welcomes it. It’s her light at the end of the tunnel. It’s interesting that the piece is named Lady Lazarus. I don’t think it implies that she wants to keep being brought back to life. But rather it refers to all the times she has been unwillingly brought back. Whether it was from failed suicide attempts or just being shocked so many times in the institutions to try and cure her depression. Regardless, she has been brought back but sooner or later her nine cat lives will run out and she will rise

“out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air” (1420)

            And she will finally have power over those who looked down on the poor sick girl. She will have conquered life and in death she will be reborn.