Metaphors

Running Head : Metaphors

An Argumentative Essay on

Sylvia Plath 's Metaphors

Name

University

A pregnancy is an exciting time for a woman who eagerly expects motherhood as a blessing in her life . Slyvia Plath 's poem Metaphor however , is about a woman who feels the pregnant state as only burdensome and an inhuman suffering imposed upon her . The baby inside her womb , meanwhile , is an object detached from her but which she is forced to carry inside her anyway

The speaker in the poem expresses her pregnant state in

different and unusual , but somehow appropriate , metaphors which make the reading strike a familiar chord among those who have or undergoing the same experience and to those who have not , a more intimate idea of how it is like to go through a pregnancy . In the first line , the persona describes herself as a riddle in nine syllables ' referring to the long period which takes to carry the baby inside a womb and the fact that the experience , like a riddle , is difficult to fully comprehend what with the mysterious cravings and the sudden aches and cramps . The number nine is also fully exploited by Plath in the poem 's structure of nine lines with nine syllables in every line further affirming the point that , even without her stating it outright , the poem is about pregnancy

In the next lines , she describes her hugeness by comparing herself to an elephant , a ponderous house . It is also uncomfortable and awkward and she...