Sylvia_Plath_Imagery

Sylvia Plath I agree that the imagery used in the presentation is of great relevance to the text it is displayed alongside. I believe that use of such imagery compliments the text. It helps bring the text to life and reflects the meaning of the text meaning on a deeper visiual level. Slide 2: The seashore, slide 10: Bee's and slide 16: ship in a bottle demonstrate this very effectively. Slide 2 features a quote from Martin Booth amid a dark, green tinged nautical scene. We can see rocks, cliffes, white sea foam and waves. Booth talks about Plath's poetry and says it “has a beautiful weirdness to it”. This is reflected in the image. The sea looks beautiful yet the darkness and the green tinge make the scene look weird, mysterious and quite eerie. The “ inviting malevolence” of the dark sea grabs your attention and seems to draw you into its depts. It “seeks to set a mood” and succeeds in doing this very well. This image is a perfect reflection of Booths words. The image helps to give his words a deeper meaning and “tell (us) something concrete”. Without this image backing up the quote, the quote would be much less effective. Slide 10 shows an extract from “ The Arrival of the Bee Box”. In the background is a picture of thousand of bumblebees swarming over something. Personally I find this image repulsive, it seems to make my skin crawl and makes me shiver. I am not a fan of bees at all and the sight of so many bee's swarming all over a surface gives me goose pimples. From the image I can almost imagine them crawling on me and it really nauseates me. This extract from the poem “The Arrival of the Bee Box” talks about the “noise” of the bee's within the bee box. Plath says the bee's are “angrily clambering” which we can clearly see from the picture. She seems to suggest the reason they are angry is because they are imprisoned. She wants to set them free and asks herself “how can I let them out'” . She tells us that “it is the noise that appalls (her) most of all” more than the fact that they are caged in. Their buzzing is “unintelligible syllables” which she likens to “a Roman mob”. From observing the picture you can almost hear the bees buzzing, droning sound Plath describes. It is very vivid. The picture appeals to all our senses. The line “small taken one by one, but my god, together!” is very striking. A singular bee is small, insignficant and practically defenceless however when a swarm of bee's form together they are a sight to be feared. A swarm is an extremely powerful force compared to a lone bee. The significance of this force is seen in the image, the enormous gathering of bee's is truely an astonishing sight. The image truely brings the text to life. Slide 16 depicts the journey of a ship within glass bottle floating on the sea. There is another ship in the distance and seagulls in the blue sky. The text in the slide discusses the aftermath of Plath's father's death which resulted in her “mother (returning) to teaching and the family moving inland”. A quote from Plath herself gives us an insight into this time of great grief in her life “whereupon those first nine years of (her) life sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle”. You would think that this text would be backed up by a dark, gloomy, depressing image but it is quite the opposite. The image of the ship in the bottle is painted using bright colours of baby blue, cream, salmon and white. The image is intreguing, happy and somewhat nonchalant. This suggests that Plath did not have a miserable early childhood, but rather a jovial one. She describes it herself as “beautiful”. But now these days of childhood bliss are “inaccessible, a fine white flying myth” seen in the image to be cast among the sea, never to return again. The image in this slide allows us to delve deeper into Plath's feelings at that time in her life and contribute to our understanding of her. In conclusion I agree that the imagery used in the presentation is of great relevance to the text. It compliments the text, brings it to life and reflects the meaning of the text on a deeper visual level as seen in slide 2, slide 10 and slide 16.