# Discussion on Specific Authors & Books > Author List: >  Sylvia Plath Essay Help!

## Josie1995

Any Plath experts got any helpful ideas for my essay? 

Whose side is the body on in Plaths poetry and to expose ideas of the body as both an enemy and as an ally?

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## Pompey Bum

Hi Josie. That sounds like a homework question to me. The best thing would probably be for you to read the material closely and think about those those things yourself. Good luck!

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## YesNo

I am having trouble trying to make sense out of what it means for the body to be on someone's side. I usually think of the body as an ally, but I don't know what Plath would have thought. She did put her head in an oven after turning on the gas while her young children were sleeping in another room. She probably didn't think that last act through carefully or maybe too carefully. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath#Suicide

I suspect she viewed her body as an enemy. Not being in her mental state, I don't know what I would have done.

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## Calidore

Sounds like an essay that could be written about David Cronenberg's work as well.

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## Clopin

> I am having trouble trying to make sense out of what it means for the body to be on someone's side. I usually think of the body as an ally, but I don't know what Plath would have thought. She did put her head in an oven after turning on the gas *while her young children were sleeping in another room* . She probably didn't think that last act through carefully or maybe too carefully. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath#Suicide
> 
> I suspect she viewed her body as an enemy. Not being in her mental state, I don't know what I would have done.


She sealed it off!

Anyway I think in the Bell Jar she's physically sick pretty much constantly and Esther is often shocked at how ugly she has become after various misadventures. I haven't read much of her poetry though.

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## YesNo

> She sealed it off!


Yes, the article mentioned that she put wet towels around the entrance to the other room. I don't know how much that actually sealed anything off, but she did think about her children. I wonder what would have happened if the gas exploded? What about her neighbors in the apartment building?

I've read a few of her poems. She's famous. I'll admit I'm a philistine. I didn't like them.

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## Clopin

I eat men like air.

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## YesNo

I wonder if she thought she would rise from the gas fumes coming from the oven like the narrator in her poem "Lady Lazarus": http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178961

It would make more sense if she wrote "I breathe men like air."

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## Clopin

Sylvia "I breathe gas like air" Plath.

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## YesNo

That makes even more sense.  :Smile:

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