{"id":1161,"date":"2021-06-05T06:30:24","date_gmt":"2021-06-04T23:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/student-activity.binus.ac.id\/himsi\/?p=1161"},"modified":"2021-06-04T11:59:52","modified_gmt":"2021-06-04T04:59:52","slug":"sylvia-plaths-lady-lazarus-finding-resistance-in-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/student-activity.binus.ac.id\/himsi\/2021\/06\/sylvia-plaths-lady-lazarus-finding-resistance-in-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Sylvia Plath\u2019s \u201cLady Lazarus\u201d: Finding Resistance in Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trigger Warning: Mentions of suicide, death, and mental illness.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you have watched any early 2000s movie that has a punk girl character that is a hardcore Riot Grrrl feminist, you probably would have seen a mention of Sylvia Plath. There would usually be a scene where those girls are reading one of her books, or mention the poem I\u2019m going to be talking about: <\/span>Lady Lazarus<\/span><\/i>. Plath has always been a staple in a teenage girl\u2019s exploration process to literature and the inherent sadness of girlhood and being young. She is one of the most influential writers and poets of the midcentury and has been credited for advancing the genre of confessional poetry. Plath\u2019s impact is undoubtedly massive and universal for young women who have experienced some form of sexism and struggle with mental illnesses.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>Lady Lazarus<\/span><\/i>\u201d talks about her suicide attempts and how she \u201crises\u201d from them. Ironically, she died approximately a year after the poem was originally written in 1962, at the age of 30. In <\/span>Lady Lazarus<\/span><\/i>, Plath uses dark imagery and a morbid tone to show the complexities of suffering from a mental illness. She had somehow made a poem about waking up from numerous suicide attempts sound less like she failed to die but more like she managed to live on for another day. The climactic power of this poem lies in the three last lines;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cOut of the ash<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

I rise with my red hair<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

And I eat men like air.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

She makes it clear that death is an art, but it is also everything that it is; gritty, grim, full of worms that people had to pick off her skin, and not all that glorious. But art is also anything you want it to be. This depiction of death is refreshing to read, in an absurd way, because it is not described in grief. She might be glorifying it in some parts, saying that she tries to die to \u201c<\/span>feel like hell<\/span><\/i>\u201d, to feel the real kind of hurt, but it is done in an eloquent way that does not romanticize it. And inherently, it is not death she loathes, but the:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201c<\/span>theatrical\/Comeback in a broad day\/To the same place\/The same face\/The same brute\/Amused shout<\/span><\/i>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

She hates coming back after a suicide attempt to a startled, dramatic surrounding. Unlike people\u2019s fear of death, she craves it, she constantly tries to achieve death and finds beauty in dying and then staying alive. And in it, she finds her power and resistance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lady Lazarus<\/span><\/i> might sound depressing for the general reader, and as I mentioned, it can even seem like it\u2019s glorifying suicide. After all, she also mentioned in the poem that you can say that she does \u201cdying\u201d exceptionally well and that it is her call. Who can blame her? Dying is a concept hard to grasp by some, and is craved by the rest. Some are too familiar with it, living in a global pandemic; I think we\u2019re all becoming a bit too familiar with it as well. For the rest of us with niche interests and a total lack of joy for life, it is comforting to find a depiction of our feelings that lets us find that power within ourselves, instead of feeling powerless to feel something that we cannot control. Dying isn\u2019t a solution; it <\/span>never <\/b>will be. But the fact that a lot of us are still here, reading this piece of writing, despite maybe the sub-plot our fate could have brought us to, that is your own little personal power.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I won\u2019t sugarcoat that Plath is notorious for being the depressing-poem-lady, but Lady Lazarus is a testament to the fact that finding resistance doesn\u2019t always have to be grand. The act of staying alive itself while you are simultaneously wishing for the opposite is resistance within yourself. I think, as bleak as it can be, at the end of Lady Lazarus, I always manage to retrace my way back to the journey I\u2019m in for the long run that is staying alive, despite.<\/span><\/p>\n

You can read Lady Lazarus in full here, and find your own resistance: <\/span>https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/49000\/lady-lazarus<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Editor: Clara Nathania & Handiko Wijaya<\/span><\/p>\n

References:<\/span><\/p>\n