Identification With the Jewish Victims Term Paper

Total Length: 1301 words ( 4 double-spaced pages)

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All of this had been made possible due to the fact that with every man, or every ten men or every million people killed by the Nazis, the prisoner community only grew stronger and more indifferent to the thought of dying.

A reason for why Plath chose to refer to the Holocaust in her poem would be that she considered the occurrence to be one of the worst acts of violence done by man. Thus she would relate to the Holocaust in her poem to present people with the passion of her feelings at the time.

Nevertheless, with all the brave people who stood strong when others would have run and hide, Plath shows that the Holocaust did indeed affect Jewish people everywhere. The scars of the Holocaust are still visible, according to Plath, with the woman in the poem still recalling, and being haunted by the disaster. The human capacity to remain strong in case of danger is similar to that of an animal, having the instinct to act and thus stay almost untouchable when regarding physical pain. The fact that the woman in the poem starts to hurt only after the danger is over demonstrates that along with the passing of a threat, humans start to realize the gravity of the situation.

Considering that Plath did indeed wrote the poem with reference to herself, at the time that she wrote it, she did not have a very good opinion about her physical appearance, as she tells about a skinny woman with bright-colored skin. Even with the fact that she did not consider herself to being perfect, she had been certain that her mind had been perfectly clear, as a result of winning the fight with herself after the several attempts of suicide which she had in her real life. Plath metaphorically mentions her suicide attempts in the poem but, according to her, the failed tries of taking her own life had motivated her to move on, eventually.
The poem tells about an event which happened to the main character, presumably Plath, at the age of ten. Later in her life, as the poem further tells, the sad event had happened once more, but it would seem that this time Plath had actually wished for it to happen. Most probably, the writer referred to her unsuccessful suicide attempts. Practice does the best performance, as readers can observe that she grew stronger and keener on succeeding after she first tried to commit suicide. Actually it would seem that the second time that she wished for her life to end, she wanted to commit the perfect suicide, certain that she could have transformed death into an art.

In "Lady Lazarus," Plath is clearly expressing her discontent for her failed suicide attempts. Also, she tells about how she would get revenge from a certain doctor. Most certainly, she refers to the doctors that have saved her from death and that have tried to cure her mental illness while she had been in the asylum.

The author had most likely chosen to create a poem which would seem to be written by a victim of the Holocaust in order for the people to understand the stress that she had been going through and the reasons why she attempted to commit suicide. She condemns Nazis in her poem and along with them she condemns men altogether for a fault which is not clear at first. It would seem that she had been tormented by the men in her life, and thus she would tend to compare them with Nazis and herself with a victim of Nazi death camps.

Plath had clearly wished for the world to feel her pain as readers can see from all the cliches that she uses in the poem to refer to a general public.

Works Cited

Plath, Sylvia. Lady Lazarus......

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