Compare Plath and Larkin Essay

analyse and contrast the government agencys in which cobblers brook is portrayed in Philip Larkins numbers long time and Ambulances and Sylvia plaths noblewoman Lazarus and Death and Co The poems i am going to analyse argon peeress Lazarus Death and Co Ambulances Days It is to a lower vex conjure upment to say that both Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin have immense depth and marcher meanings to their poems, both writers expertly structure their poems and dropd varied techniques to subscribe their themes of remainder and instil their messages to their readers.Plath goes about it an autobiographical elan and parades close as a theatrical plant leaving the earshot in shock and veneration however Larkin presents termination in a kindhearted of trivial macrocosmner in comparison to Plath. He juxtaposes the either(prenominal)day street scene with horrific. He uses the ambulance as a momentary that remnant is every present and our lives at last lead to the journey of close. The oxymoron Lady Lazarus is signifi skunkt to the poem. Lazarus, origin solelyy a man who is raised from the dead by Jesus is feminised and turned into Lady Lazarus. Plath summarises what she tactile sensations the wonderful gift of being reborn.The rhyming fix of prognosticate Lady Lazarus liberates herself from the irrevocable influence of the potent figure portrays her idea of feminine favorable position over men and how women should excel over men in whatsoever they do however Larkins comprise of address Ambulances is a noun that is comm and associated with the nix imagery relating to accidents,hospitals ,blood, injuries and most importantly demise. Both writers use lexical techniques to convey their outlook and opinion on the theme of expiration some of which consists of rhyme, rhetorical devices and their choice of vocab.Rhyme is used in the starting time stanza as Plath decl bes I have done it over once again/One year in every ten she emphasises to th e equal repartition of her contiguous- goal get it ons and holds connotations of her suicide seeks, one year in every ten and one being premeditated at this stage. Plath speaks in hyperboles to emphasise her suicidal intention and her need to control her ending and become a walking miracle. The pre modifier walking illustrates the fact that despite her many near death experiences she is still alive and ready as ever to attempt an new(prenominal) suicide experience.The uoyant noun miracle that Plath describes herself as, demonstrates to the reader rightful(prenominal) how romantically Plath thinks of death to be and how her land uping her protest sustenance story is a seemingly phenomenal way of dying. In comparison to this, Larkin contrasts his lexical techniques in oppose to Plath, he begins with the commencement exercise stanza being a dramatic, alliterative opener. The vehicles be Closed c be confessionals and atomic number 18 giving back none of the glances they abs orb like a corpse. The alliterative statement closed like confessionals illustrates the Roman Catholic idea of confessing sins to a priest in a closed box.This likewise outlines the poems religious spirit and demonstrates to us the religious idea of death which connotes it of being like a closed collide with box a coffin. This alike depicts the closed off genius of death and how once a person dies every thing, they ar sealed off from the world, an end to everything. Larkin uses enjambment to emphasize the disconnection between sight and death by dint ofout the poem. In the maiden devil lines, the lack of punctuation mark ironically causes the reader to stop at the end of each line.This symbolises the time interval between the ambulance, and the city it is travelling through, as well as the glances the ambulance takes in. In the fourth stanza, Larkin uses enjambment in five out of the six lines, demonstrating the isolation of death throughout society. Specifically in th e last three lines and into the last stanza, Larkin reveals that what unites one an early(a) across the years, at last falls unconnected in that location (in the ambulance and at the hospital), while connecting all four of those lines.Vocabulary is as well an element used by Plath to depict death her language designate is bold and informal. The vocabulary and metres cite out the conversational speeches at bottom the poem and make them out to be colloquial and everyday spoken, the frequently end-stopped lines, the repetitions which have the effect of derisively counteracting the violence of the meaning, all establish the c arefully dismissive note of death which Plath strives to achieve..At times the olfactory modality is hysterically strident and demanding unwrap me hand and foot The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. Iambic pentameter is also used in Lady Lazarus because it mimics the rhythm of conversational speech and makes it closer to spo ntaneous speech. This also highlights Lady Lazarus aural quality as it is meant to be read aloud which emphasizes it rhetorical posture and perhaps the power that Lady Lazarus has gained throughout the poem I am your opusI am your valuable The pure gold muck up The spontaneous structure of the poem emphasises the emotional and physcological disintegration of Lady Lazarus and how she speaks ad lib out of pain that she is feeling form her suicidal attempts On the contrary, Larkin also used five groups of six lines of poetry (sestet) of iambic trimeter and roughly in that location are some irregularities, a, with the first and last lines of each sestet rhyming, and the essence rhyming ab-a-b like a ballad.The second stanza, only the first and last lines have been ended with punctuation leaving everything in the mediate flowing. The women in the shops are detached from the Wild white face inside the ambulance. The third stanza all ends with punctuation, excluding the first line. T his one exception is very stranded at bottom the stanza as it is the only line left to flow. The flow emphasizes that the figure out emptiness is not an obvious encounter which we face every day.The work emptiness, a description of death, lies just under all we do, not exposed. Moreover, Plath employs and uses unique language receives to express her emotion soon, soon the flesh/the overweight cave repetition is used to emphasise her point across to the audience, she also repeats soon twice to comfort the audience as well as herself this also correlates to Plaths idea of death and how it is a welcoming experience not to be terrified by, something that makes her feel at home.To the readers and audience itself it is something disorientating and a lonely discomforting concept, besides to Plath and her persona Lazarus, it is something they embrace with open gird and are anticipating it soon nevertheless, Larkin goes about his language features assortedly so a great deal so tha t Larkin hardly uses devices much(prenominal) as repetition, exclamation , but preferably settles for an indirect approach to his language, the only apparent use of language feature is the distinctive italic fronted text poor soul ,this highlights and emphasises the point Larkin wishes to make and also is his idea od the reaction given to the audience and the reader.This again relates to Larkins idea of death and his opinion being in sum contrast to Plath. For Larkin, death is a dreadful thing, a cold, merciless, selfish thing and when death strikes it only tail end be described for the prey of death as poor which Larkin does, to have ignominy on those death has taken. understanding has In Lady Lazarus the audience are the spectators watching the performer show off her daring acts in order to prepare her to die. She in other words entertains the audience by producing her own death in a sooner erotic manner.The audience is shown the grim reality of death through the pre-modifie r peanut-crunching. This illustrates to the reader just how engrossed the audience is in watching Lady Lazarus attempt her suicide and are absorbed in the peculiarness of her death and robotically carry on crunching on their peanuts oblivious to just how dismal the death of Lady Lazarus is . Showmanship is portrayed through the use of first person I throughout the whole poem and the audience seems to develop a luff from the gothic striptease Lady Lazarus puts on for them or perhaps a fritter the audience have to pay for watching. use the metaphor charge gives connotations of the audience wanting a show, watching Lady Lazarus unwrap herself ,restored to life The big strip tease indicating sexual connotations of the audience being for the most part male and receiving some sort of sexual fulfilment from this. Plath also portrays her rather freakish desire for death by minding the audience immediately O my enemy/ do I terrify? The vocative O along with the possessive pronoun my d irectly challenges the audience as if the audience are somewhat responsible for the suicidal state that Plath is now in, intimidating them as she challenges them.The O my could also be taken as a form of loving address to her lover. If put next to enemy it reflects her feelings about death as if it I something to long and lust for however death is all something that is utterly terrifying at the same time as it is a mystery to all of us. It also adds a backbone of awkwardness throughout the poem as the reader begins to wonder about death and what appears in the here later on. The audience also feels partly responsible for Plaths terrible state and are also blamed for causing her death in such a manner.The rhetorical question do I terrify not only involves the audience directly, but also threatens the audience rather treatly as if the answer to the question should be nothing but a yes. The verb terrify portrays Plaths dual state, just like the Nazis she will not hesitate to inflict pain upon herself in order for her to die hitherto just like the Jewish race she fades beneath a affectionate force as she begins to doubt whether she is capable of ending her life. This again progressively adds to awkward uncomfortable nature as audience beings to wonder what kind of miserable state she will be left in when she dies. until now the audience in Ambulances are the tidy sum (mainly middle class) that are more or less where the death has taken transmit. They are the children strewn on steps and women coming from the shops. here the normality of life trivialises the horror of death as ordinary people carry on living their life. They are watching horrifically as the body comes in. The audience here is rather sympathetic and empathise with the person that has just died. Poor soul/they whisper at their own distress.Using the verb whisper Larkin wishes to portray how the audience not only whispers out of remorse, pity and respect for the person that has just died b ut also whisper because they feel a sense of relief and thankfulness that the person that has just expire was not themselves or their loved one. here(predicate) Larkin shows us the selfish nature of man and how man despite everything shall always care about them in essence leaving everybody walking on their own. Through this Larkin shows us how death is, death shall leave every person unaccompanied and everyone shall be no one.Death is selfish and when the appointed time, death shall not wait and in that respectfore All streets in time are visited. The visitor being death personified through the use of a vehicle, the Ambulance. The ambulance here is death. And Larkin portrays the randomness of death and how unthought it can be by the use of the preposition in and the noun time. Here Larkin reminds the reader than death is inevitable and is always there, a god like figure. Larkin also presents the idea that the audience, the onlookers forgot about death hitherto are reminded whe n a death appears around their life and the fastened doors recede.The audience are perhaps morbidly fascinated by death as it appears strange to them but then the audience then begins to realise the emptiness/That lies under all we do and for a moment the audience understands that life has only one certainty death. The title of the poem Death & Co title is an etymological, lexical technique in itself and is employed by the writer to remove the perception of the reader, for the reader to be open minded and to grasp the writers idea. The co referred to in the title refers to a telephone circuit which begins to establish the ironic and mocking mood of the poem,.Death is often viewed with incongruity, something that coldly takes away life yet offers comfort to those who are in pain or believe in an afterlife. This again links to the idea of death being a business because the persona asserts that there are two referring to the two individuals that make up the entity called Death and co . To the persona it is perfectly instinctive that there are two people because a business must be compromised of at least two people. In Death & Co the persona asserts that, there are two, personifying death the two individuals who make up the entity called Death & Co.She comments that it is natural that there would be two, as most companies are made up of at least two people. The individual exhibits // birthmarks, and the speaker pro take aims that they are his trademark. This claim subsumes the title of the poem, metaphorically revealing the business which is Death & Co. By doing this the ide of death is bought closer to the persona as it now becomes a threat that is discernible and is standing before the narrator. Sibilance is used to describe the trademark the scald tick of water.The effect of the assonance is that it creates harsh violent sound and emphasises the unrelenting and punitive nature of the partners in Death & Co. Larkin however does not use his metaphoric obje ctified technique in the title but rather from within the poem itself. In the second stanza Larkin uses the priest and the doctor as symbols of several(predicate) sentiments and values of death. The priest being a man of piety and the doctor symbolic to a man of scholarship who both serves in solving that question two people obsessed with the mystery of death appears after the question has been solved.The priest coat is black which represents death and he helps the person from moving from this life to the next. The Doctor coat is white which represents life as the doctor tries to revive the person. This again has connotations of conflict between science and religion Plath begins by using repetition of numbers two of menstruate there are two. She is reasserting that death has come in two living forms before her. One of them looking grotesque, whose eyes are lidded and the other is attractive having long and plausive hair yet spartan .She does this to juxtapose the idea of life a nd death, the fact that two mortal creatures are bring about her lifeless state. The two figures create a sense of fear within her as she passs it difficult to name the two. he tells me how severely/He tells me how sweet. The repetition of Second person pronouns and the juxtaposition of her different feelings towards death emphasises how at times death appears inviting and perhaps more easier ersatz to life difficulties yet the sheer fact of suicide perhaps restrains her form ending her life as the fear of the unknown in the afterlife haunts her .Which perhaps emphasizes her fearful yet unrecognisable feelings towards death. She fears death and the reader can see that Plaths posseses a dreadened predatory victimised outlook on death so she cannot find a specific name to address them as or perhaps there is no personal fond regard to death as death is metaphorically recognised as a business, it performs it function and then leaves. On the other hand Larkin uses the same rhetoric al feature of repetition but in a rather different manner.Days are repeated three times in the first stanza and this repetition forces the reader to think about the meaning of the word years which is the futility of existence ,the inevitable truth that all life must end in death. The reader is compelled to think about what would happen after the years has ended. Larkin gives day a spatial dimension as he describes long time as Days are where we live. This raises about how time is measured the nature of it and its artificiality. Days are not a place,not a where but a when and it is in this paradox that leads to the blank response to the second question. Where can we live but age.From this question the answerer is now question themselves as they come to realise the inevitable truth behind days ,there is a lack of choice to the answer and the answerer realises that on the other side of dyas is the night which holds high connotations of death and the afterlife something which clearl y fright and perhaps intrigues the answerer Once a person no nightlong has any days left to live in,the only other place that a person can occupy will be a place in his grave The use of a voice or persona is clearly present in both poems although again both poets use this craft differently to suit their own methods of portraying death.Larkin does not clearly portray the identity of the voice or the voices the reader perceives in Days however what we do know is that there is a clear distinction bewtween the voice that asks the questions and the voice that answers the questions. The questions that questioner asks are literally round-eyed,naive and appear to be that of a child asking questions rather simple questions. Of course the underlying meaning which lies behing these unpretentious questins is the metaphor of death in the background. The second voice appears to be different and fluctuates throughout the growing of the poem.This voice appears to be the answerer to the questions that are asked and answers the question in a rather straightforward manner . The answer to the first question Days are where we live denotes a matter of fact, mollifying tone as the simple question is answered by an equally simple although equally worrying answer. At first the voice appears to be kindly positive reassuring the callow questioner that days are to be happy in which again holds connotations of death. It tells the questioner and the reader also that the inevitability of death is true so we should live our lives while we have it and enjoy and be happy within it.In the second stanza the answerer adopts a worldly macabre tone almost mocking and cruel as it dryly observes that the only place people can inhibit apaprt from days is death. the questioner is trying to find a simple answer and uses the filler ah to contemplate on what happens after days,the question become a lot of bigger then it initially seemed and the answerer realises there is no simplistic way to answer it and so the preist and doctor are suppousedly the only people that hold the answers to the question However Plath uses two male persona in her poem to portray death and reveal the double or schizophrenic nature of death.The use of male personas was chosen deliberately to emphasise the painful sense of mans seemingly innate Judas quality just as death can be cruel and snipe away joy at the last moment.