Sylvia Plath's Poem 'Elm'

Study Notes

Poem Analysis: "Elm" by Sylvia Plath

Themes and Ideas

Depression
Mental Health / Anxiety
Psychic Landscape
The importance of communication

Style

Personification of the elm tree
An imagined, psychic landscape
Sound effects (sibilance in particular)
Repetition
Provocative imagery (visual, kinesthetic, auditory)
Imagery from the natural world (elm tree, moon, sea, wind)
Figurative language (wind as a metaphor for Plath's depression)

Key Quotes and Analysis

"I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: / It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there."
- The elm tree understands suffering, "the bottom," right to its core
"Is it the sea you hear in me, / Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?"
- Aural imagery, assonance, and sibilance create an uncomfortable atmosphere
"Love is a shadow. / How you lie and cry after it / Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse."
- The girl is mocked for mourning her lost happiness
"All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously, / Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, / Echoing, echoing."
- Plath portrays a striking depiction of how a person's inner-most thoughts and fears can consume and destroy them
"Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? This is rain now, this big hush. / And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic."
- The mood shifts suddenly, with the tree wondering if it should let the girl listen to the sound of poisons
"I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. / Scorched to the root / My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires."
- The tree's tone changes, becoming more empathetic
"Now I break up into pieces that fly about like clubs. / A wind of such violence / Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek."
- Depression is like the wind, causing violence and discomfort
"The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me / Cruelly, being barren. / Her radiance scathes me."
- The moon's radiance hurts, suggesting an emptiness
"I let her go. / I let her go / Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery."
- The struggle between the tree and the moon is akin to internal struggle
"I am inhabited by a cry. / Nightly it flaps out / Looking, with its hooks, for something to love."
- The tree is inhabited by a cry, symbolizing an aspect of depression
"I am terrified by this dark thing / That sleeps in me; / All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity."
- The tactile image reveals an uncomfortable portrayal of mental suffering
"Clouds pass and disperse. / Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? / Is it for such I agitate my heart?"
- Natural landscape allows Plath to showcase her feelings of being cut off from everything around her
"I am incapable of more knowledge. / What is this, this face / So murderous in its strangle of branches? / Its snaky acids hiss. / It petrifies the will."
- The final two stanzas merge the voices, making it difficult to tell who is speaking
- The repetition of "kill" emphasizes the destructive nature of depression