"So, so, Herr Doktor.So, Herr Enemy.I am your opus,I am your valuable,"Plath's poem is written in the confessional style, meaning that the participant is highly sensitive, relating painful experiences of her life."Lady Lazarus" was written after her divorce. Her desire for death is not due only to her mental illness and her husband leaving her, but also to the fact that her father had refused any treatment himself, thus leading to his death; Sylvia could have been influenced by this.The title refers to the New Testament of the Bible; Lazarus is a man who rises from the dead at the command of Jesus Christ. The poem was comple ...view middle of the document...
That is why she tried to recreate pain, death, sadness and disappointment with the humanity and society.She uses a macabre imagery and irony at the men surrounding her in her third attempt to suicide. The doctors that saved her are her enemy, the Nazis, torturing her by forcing her to live.Even if she is different from them, their "opus", she is extremely valued by them because she is an experiment, and that also refers to the period when she was in a hospital, under treatment.She is in complete control of her body, she sees the rescue as a striptease show and mocks at the world for staring, for the fascination with her attempt.The poem had made her famous posthumously, written in the last half year of her life, before she succeeded in killing herself by gassing at 31 years old.It is highly personal ( confessional) and provides insight into her mind in her attempt to explain herself to the world. For her, being reborn is an agony , a punishment. Her red hair and the fact that she rises from the dead is similar to the Phoenix legend, " I eat men like air" is an act of revenge of men who disappointed her.During her period, a trait of the confessional poetry was: "The personal is political" , which was a slogan of progressive politics, and madness was glorified as a mode of resistance to a repressive society.
