Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) METAPHORS I'm a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils.

O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf's big with its yeasty rising. Money's new-minted in this fat purse. I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf. I've eaten a bag of green apples, Boarded the train there's no getting off. In this poem, Plath runs through many PARALLEL IMAGES to express her feelings about being pregnant. The first is her ignorance of what her baby will be (boy? girl? placid? temperamental? tall? short?) at the end of nine months: it is a "riddle." Next, she emphasizes (via the elephant) the weight she has gained and (via the house) the difficulty of movement. Next, she emphasizes (via the melon) her new shape and how fragile her legs feel (like tendrils) supporting her abdomen. From the melon, she generalizes to the newborn baby as a "red fruit" then generalizes further to its precious potential as "ivory" and "fine timbers." The dynamism of the progress of pregnancy is pointed to in the organic "yeasty rising" of bread; but then the dynamism (given its value) is made inorganic, as money is "new-minted" (but with a return to her weight in the referral to herself as a "fat" purse). The next set of metaphors, however, departs from what we could reasonably call "images." "I'm a means, a stage." These ABSTRACTIONS a means to an end, a stage in a process show the poet generalizing beyond the dynamic images (bread rising, money being newly minted) to dynamism itself, a dynamism that reaches to a foreseen conclusion. Immediately the poet returns to IMAGES. She is a pregnant cow (another reference to her unwieldy size) who has "eaten a bag of green apples" (thought to provoke labor in cows); and she is a helpless and fearful passenger, unable to leave the rushing forward motion of the train that will take her to her unknown destination. You might ask yourself both why the poet passes from images to abstractions, and equally why she does not end in abstractions but returns to images for closure. Does it seem dehumanizing for the author to call herself a means? a stage? Each of Plath's images has a part-to-whole relation to the theme of the poem. Taken all together, they give the poem its emotional resonance. Which parts are cheerful? Which are triumphant? Which are apprehensive? How would the poem be different if it ended with the elephant? the money? the cow? the stage? Why does Plath end, do you think, with the train?