Transcript Morning Song Sylvia Plath

Morning Song
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
• Born on October 27, 1932 in Boston
• Her father died a couple weeks after her
eighth birthday
• She attended Smith College where she
began to show signs of serious depression
and attempted to kill herself
• She married Ted Hughes, a famous poet
who was later accused of abuse
• Had two kids, Frieda Rebecca and
Nicholas Farrar, but suffered a miscarriage
in 1961
• Around 1962, her husband left her for
another woman
• On February 11, 1963 she committed
suicide by placing her head inside an oven
Morning Song
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.
Morning Song
All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.
One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.
Musical Version of Morning Song
• http://www.johnmitchell.org/morning.mp3
Poem’s Organization
• Six tercets
• Free verse
The Speaker
• A mother who recently gave birth
• She’s in the process of caring for her baby,
which requires a significant amount of time
and energy
– Despite this, the mother appears genuinely
devoted to her child
– She’s undergoing post partum depression
The Speaker – Sylvia Plath
• Due to her numerous autobiographical poems, it
can safely be assumed that Plath is the speaker
• As a mother of two, she has experience as a
mother
• Her miscarriage most likely instilled a sense of
unhappiness regarding her view of childbirth
The Speaker’s Attitude Towards the
Subject
• Initially, the speaker acts as if she is almost
indifferent towards the subject (the newborn
child) because he seems inhuman
• Eventually, her indifference turns to
annoyance at the child’s needs, but the
baby’s first words reinforce her love of the
child and are somewhat uplifting
First Stanza
• This is the only stanza in past tense, all other stanzas
are in present tense and thus refer to present actions
• “Love set you going like a fat gold watch
– The baby is born, he is given a kickstart on life through “love”
– The birth is compared to a gold, seemingly wonderful watch
being wound and set for life
– The gold watch symbolizes the mechanical and inhuman nature
of the child
“The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald
cry/Took its place among the elements.”
– The baby is thrust into life by the jolt of a midwife, and his
existence in the universe is now complete because of the cry
Second Stanza
“Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival”
– As the baby is coming out, the parents begin to get
excited in approach of the birth
• “New statue.”
– The Speaker compares the baby to a statue, indicating
how impersonal she feels towards the child
• “In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.”
– The hospital is referred to as a sterile museum
– The nakedness of the baby reassures the parents as they
can take comfort in their clothes
– The blank stare of the adults shows how distant they are
Third Stanza
• “I'm no more your mother/Than the cloud that distills a
mirror to reflect its own slow/
Effacement at the wind's hand.”
– This stanza begins to hint at post partum depression;
the mother loses her sense of closeness towards the
child
– The speaker feels that the child will serve as a mirror
to the mother’s own life as it slowly disappears
Fourth Stanza
• “All night your moth-breath/Flickers among
the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:/
A far sea moves in my ear.”
– The “moth-breath” identifies the baby’s delicacy
– The “far sea” is a metaphor for the child’s
constant noise; the mother is always listening for
any kind of distress
Fifth Stanza
• “One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and
floral/In my Victorian nightgown.”
– “Cow-heavy” refers to the post-birth weight of the
mother and demonstrates how difficult it is to get up
from bed
– This shows the mother’s true devotion
• “Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window
square”
– The comparison of the baby to an animal is another
instance of the child appearing impersonal
– The open mouth indicates the baby’s hunger
Sixth Stanza
• “Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And
now you try/Your handful of notes;/The clear
vowels rise like balloons.”
– As the dull stars are swallowed, day breaks and
the baby begins to speak
– This stanza represents a huge shift from
previous lines; the poem appears almost uplifting
in comparing the baby’s first noises to balloons
Diction and Syntax
• The wording is simple yet the phrasing appears precise
and formal
• The exception to his is the phrase “cow-heavy”, which is
used to demonstrate the uncomfortable nature of the
mother
• The diction changes throughout the poem; while
describing the birth the speaker uses bleak adjectives
such as “drafty” and “bald”
• As the speaker narrates her life with the child, she
begins to use slightly more pleasant language
– In stanzas four and five she uses floral language to
describe her nightgown and her baby’s breath
Diction and Syntax
• Although most stanzas are comprised of
sentences, nearly the entire poem is told
through metaphors and similes; it’s not
entirely straightforward
Imagery
• Until the last stanza, the speaker employs
a variety of melancholy images including a
statue-like description of her child and a
comparison of motherhood to the “slow
effacement” of a cloud
• While describing the baby’s noises, Plath
uses balloon imagery to convey optimism
Conclusions
• The title refers to the last stanza of the poem,
in which the baby’s first “clear vowels” are
spoke after a difficult night with his mother
• As a whole, the poem deals with a mother’s
relationship with her child
• After giving birth and caring for the child, she
is finally rewarded with the “Morning Song,”
namely the baby’s first attempt at speech
The Poem Again
Love set you going like a fat gold
watch.
The midwife slapped your
footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your
arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your
nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand
round blankly as walls.
I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror
to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.
All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink
roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.
One cry, and I stumble from
bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a
cat's. The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull
stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like
balloons.
Bibliography
• "Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) - Pseudonym Victoria
Lucas." Books and Writers. 2000. 28 Apr. 2008
<http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/splath.htm>.
– (biography)
• http://www.swisseduc.ch/english/readinglist/plath
_sylvia/icons/plath.jpg
– (picture)