Elm Speaks By Plath
Sylvia Plath’s "The Elm Speaks" Dutch elm disease is one of the
most
devastating shade tree diseases the earth has ever seen. It is a wilt
disease
with an extremely high fatality rate. The disease is characterized by
gradual
yellowing of the leaves and defoliation. This is caused be a fungus
which is
transmitted from diseased trees to healthy trees by insects known as
bark
beetles. In the 1962 villanelle "The Elm Speaks" confessionalist
Sylvia
Plath compares her depressed emotional state with Dutch elm
disease, which
killed millions of Elm trees around the world. In the fourteen
stanza poem
written only one year before her suicide, a bitter Plath cries
out with pain.
The theme of depression originates from the loss of love
in her marriage to Ted
Hughes. The poem is extremely rich in metaphorical
language from beginning to
end. In many ways the poem is designed to fit the
definition of a villanelle.
"The Elm Speaks" is a free verse poem with
chaotic meter. While living in
London, Sylvia Plath had a massive elm
tree in front of he house that became the
subject of this poem. In the first
stanza, she mentions her "great tap
root," which is the very bottom of the
elm’s roots. This line symbolizes
that she has reached the very bottom of her
depression. She describes her
depression further in stanza two as a "sea of
dissatisfactions," "or the
voice of nothing" meaning it is raging inside of
her. At the same time she has
an empty feeling which is driving her mad.
Afterwards, in stanza three, she
compares love to a shadow, a dark reflection
of someone which is not real and
can not be touched. "Till your head is a
stone, you pillow a little turf"
creates the image of a grave stone in stanza
four. "The sounds of poisons"
in stanza five refers to what Hughes, her
husband, has done to her and how it
burns inside of her killing her like
"arsenic". In stanza six she expresses
that she has been through a lot, but
she has always gotten through it. In stanza
seven, however, she admits that
she has broken down and can not and will not
take her pain anymore. Next, in
stanza eight she describes the moon, which is
normally calming, as merciless,
meaning that even the few things in life she
used enjoy are now driving her
insane. Similarly, in stanza nine, she talks
about dreams and how they
"possess and endow" her. In other words she feels
as if she is trapped inside
an ongoing nightmare. In the tenth stanza she
confesses that she is holding
everything in and that nightly it "flaps out"
which means she cries herself
to sleep. She is terrified of her depression and
its effects on her, which
she admits in stanza eleven. Next, in stanza twelve
she portrays the "faces
of love" as "pale irretrievable" saying that one
can never find love, it is
out of reach. For the second time in the poem, in
stanza thirteen, she admits
that she can not take the pain she is suffering
anymore. Finally in the last
stanza, she uses sexual imagery that for the most
part states, the fact that
they got together has killed her. The later years of
Plath’s life, when
she wrote "The Elm Speaks", were very tragic. She
suffered from a vast number
of mental illnesses, including being bipolar or
manic depressive. Her moods
were constantly up and down, one minute happy the
next sad. Just one year
before she wrote this poem she suffered through her
second miscarriage, which
was shortly followed by an appendectomy. Through all
of this her husband Ted
Hughes abused her both mentally and physically, driving
her deeper into her
depression. During these difficult years she wrote Ariel, a
volume of poetry
mainly concerning subjects such as injury, victimization,
parasitism,
alienation, brutality, war, cannibalism, death in all forms,
torture, murder,
suicide, mental illness, and anger. Only one week after Ariel
was completed
she viciously committed suicide by putting her head in the oven
after making
her children breakfast on the morning of February eleventh, 1963.
In her
poetry it is obvious that suicide was something she had been considering
for
a long time, becoming an obsession or even an addiction. Throughout
"The
Elm Speaks" Plath generates a basic them of depression. She presents
herself
as being the victim of a horrible love relationship that has ruined
her. She
uses many different techniques to help create her theme. The first,
and most
obvious, is her word choice. She uses words such as fear, madness,
poisons,
arsenic, shriek, hiss, and kill. These keep the reader unsettled.
The second is
her intensely powerful concluding line, "That kill, that kill,
that kill."
This helps to establish theme because it is the very last
thing the reader
reads, therefore it withholds in the mind. Lastly,
throughout the poem she makes
undefined references to suicide or death. The
first, in line eleven, "Till
your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf"
creates an image of a grave.
Later, in stanza five, "the sounds of
poisons" and "arsenic" give the
reader the idea of both murder and suicide.
Finally, the first line of stanza
thirteen, "I am incapable of more
knowledge" can be interpreted that she can
not take her life anymore. This
gives the reader the impression that she may be
considering suicide. Because
of these things, the themes of depression and fury
are wonderfully captured
giving the reader a good sense of Plath’s anger. The
entire poem is filled
with elaborate metaphorical language. The most important
is the metaphor of
the elm tree. A strong, beautiful tree, suddenly killed by
Dutch elm
disease, which began to spread wildly in London during the early
1960’s.
In this metaphor Plath, the strong elm tree, dies in London in 1963,
is
internally killed by Hughes, the Dutch elm disease. A smaller metaphor,
in
stanza three, uses a horse, which stands for manliness, or Hughes, and
hooves
running away, or Hughes leaving her. Also, in stanzas six and seven
she gives
the image of a storm which is a metaphor for the anger toward
Hughes which is
storming inside of her. Later, in stanza ten she is
"inhabited by a cry",
the cry signifies the her need for love. Afterwards, in
stanza eleven the"dark thing" she is afraid of represents the need for love she
feels inside.
Lastly, the "knowledge" she has become "incapable of" in
stanza thirteen
symbolizes that she can no longer stand the pain she has
learned to accept. The
metaphors Plath uses throughout the poem help to
create a clear image of the
hurt she feels within. "The Elm Speaks" fits many
of the characteristics of
a villanelle. A villanelle is a type of poem having
only two strategically
placed inner rhymes. This poem has one at the
beginning and one at the end. The
first are fear and hear in the third and
fourth line, and the second will and
kill are in lines forty-one and
forty-two. When the words she chose are put
together; fear, hear, will, and
kill, they generate the idea that the fear you
are hearing in her will kill
her. This makes it clear that they are very
carefully chosen and placed.
Also, villanelle stanzas are always tercets, which
is true throughout this
poem. Finally, in most villanelles, the first and third
line in each stanza
have the same number of syllables. In "The Elm Speaks"
this is only true in
three of the stanzas. First, in stanza seven they each have
eleven syllables.
Second, in stanza thirteen, each consists of ten syllables. At
the end, in
the fourteenth stanza each line contains only six syllables. The
meter in the
poem from the first line to the last is completely chaotic, which
can be seen
in the following: I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my
great tap
root. It is what you fear. I do not fear it; I have been there. Is it
the sea
you hear in me. Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing that was
your
madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it! Listen. These
are
its hooves. It has gone off, like a horse. All night I shall gallop
thus,
impetuously, Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing,
echoing. Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? This is rain
now, its big
hush. And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic. I
have suffered the
atrocity of sunsets. Scorched to the root, My red filaments
burn and stand, a
hand of wires. Now I break up in pieces that fly about like
clubs. A wind of
such violence. Will tolerate no bystanding; I must shriek
The moon, also, is
merciless; she would drag me Cruelly, being barren. Her
radiance scathes me. Or
perhaps I have caught her. I let her go. I let her
go. Diminished and flat, as
after radical surgery. How your bad dreams
possess and endow me! I am inhabited
by a cry. Nightly it flaps out, Looking,
with its hooks, for something to love.
I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft,
feathery turnings, its malignity.
Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces
of love, those pale
irretrievable? Is it for such I agitate my heart? I am
incapable of more
knowledge. What is this, this face So murderous in its
strangle of branches?
Its snaky acids hiss. It petrifies the will. These are the
isolate, slow
faults That kill, that kill, that kill. The chaos in the meter may
signify
the disruption she is feeling within herself. "The Elm Speaks" is a
free
verse poem having very little rhyme, consisting of many assonance
and
consonance. The only rhyme throughout the poem, as stated before, are the
two
inner rhymes, fear, hear, will, and kill. From beginning to end, the
poem
contains massive amounts of assonance. The most obvious are the O’s.
Each
stanza consists of a least seven or eight O’s including the many sets
of
double O’s. Also, E’s are very common in each stanza, containing as many
as
7 E’s. The most common consonance are the many N’s and S’s. Each
stanza
has an average of as many as eight S’s and N’s. Other than these
few
patterns, the poem is a completely free verse poem. In conclusion,
Plath
masterfully expresses her feeling of hurt, do to the painfully hard
years she
was struggling through. Because of this, her themes of depression
and anger jump
out at the reader. Also, the beautifully written metaphorical
language helps to
establish the theme. Many of the traits in this free verse
poem make it a
villanelle. In the fourteen stanza poem "The Elm Speaks"
Sylvia Plath
wonderfully achieves her comparison with the elm tree, which
also suffered
during the time of Dutch elm disease, which it eventually died
from. "The Elm
Speaks" I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my
great tap root. It is
what you fear. I do not fear it; I have been there. Is
it the sea you hear in
me. Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing that
was your madness? Love is
a shadow. How you lie and cry after it! Listen.
These are its hooves. It has
gone off, like a horse. All night I shall gallop
thus, impetuously, Till your
head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing. Or shall I bring
you the sound of poisons? This is rain
now, its big hush. And this is the fruit
of it: tin-white, like arsenic. I
have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root, My red
filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires. Now I
break up in pieces that fly
about like clubs. A wind of such violence. Will
tolerate no bystanding; I
must shriek The moon, also, is merciless; she would
drag me Cruelly, being
barren. Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught
her. I let her go.
I let her go. Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad
dreams possess and endow me! I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it
flaps out,
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love. I am terrified by
this dark
thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings,
its
malignity. Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those
pale
irretrievable? Is it for such I agitate my heart? I am incapable of
more
knowledge. What is this, this face So murderous in its strangle of
branches? Its
snaky acids hiss. It petrifies the will. These are the isolate,
slow faults That
kill, that kill, that kill.