Marina's+analysis


 * "The Colossus" by Sylvia Plath**

Sylvia Plath's "The Colossus" is not the least bit optimistic. In fact, it seems to literally be dripping in despair, hopelessness, dejectedness, and even depression. The poem is about a person who is working on a statue and has been working for a long time with no avail and knows their work will never be rewarded with completion, and so is feeling as if life itself is quite fruitless.

From the very first stanza, Plath illustrates the very nature of hopelessness that her poem conveys. The poem begins, "I shall never get you put together entirely, / Pieced, glued, and properly jointed." (lines 1-2) The speaker here is saying that she feels as though she is unable to completely revive the statue upon which she is working. The very next stanza is quite hopeless as well, but takes this idea further still. The speaker claims to have worked 30 years "To dredge the silt from your throat" (line 9), but observes "I am none the wiser." (line 10). This suggests that the speaker has been trying to understand the statue, because dredging the silt from its throat implies that the speaker is trying to understand what the statue might be trying to say. Since the speaker is none the wiser though, we can safely assume that the speaker does not believe that he or she has learned anything at all from the statue.

What I noticed in the next part of the poem, is that the entire poem reflects Plath's ideas about life and death. In the third stanza, the speaker describes what she is working on as, "To mend the immense skull-plates and clear / The bald, white tumuli of your eyes." (lines 14-15) The use of the the word "skull-plates" is an allusion to death, as is the word "tumuli", which is a type of burial mound. Becuase of Plath's allusion to death here, I would argue that the statue could be symbolic of a person who was great during their lifetime but who has now either literally or symbolically died and their greatness has died with them. I assert that their greatness has died with them because the speaker, in the very next stanza, observes

A blue sky out of the Oresteia Arches above us. O father, all by yourself You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum. (lines 16-18)

which compares the statue to a historical artifact in a way. Historical artifacts may have once been great, but once they become buried by time they lose their old greatness. Plath considers this idea in terms of life and death as well. During life, a person may do great things, but once they die and have been dead, they can never be brought back, and their life may seem almost fruitless because it will be forgotten and perhaps not even necessary to the world at large. Even though everyone must die though, the person who the statue is a representation of must have been important, at least to the speaker, because she is both taking care of him and notes that "It would take more than a lightning-stroke / To create such a ruin." (lines 22-23) This suggests that the statue was so powerful and great that it took quite a bit to destroy it eventually. Of course, now that it is destroyed, there is no hope of repair.

All in all, the speaker in "The Colossus" has a very hopeless idea of life. Plath illustrates the fruitlessness of life and the way that death can so easily destroy someone beyond repair by using the statue as an excellent metaphor throughout the poem. This idea of hopelessness and despair is finished up nicely in the last stanza of the poem, where the speaker concludes,  Counting the red stars and those of plum-color. The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue. My hours are married to shadow. No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel On the blank stones of the landing. (lines 26-30)

The stars and sun show the amount of fruitless days and nights which are passing by, the shadow shows the darkness in which the speaker feels as if he or she lives in, and the last two lines suggest that the speaker has given up waiting to be rescued, because a keel is a part of a ship, so the speaker is perhaps on an island, but has now given up hope of ever leaving. These three ideas wrap up the larger theme of this poem that death can destroy life and former greatness so much that any hopes of return to the past are futile.

Overall, Plath expertly conveys her message that death is powerful enough to destroy someone for good, no matter how great they were in life. Once a person is destroyed like this, they cannot ever be as great as they were in life. Therefore, life is pointless since everyone will die someday and their greatness will not matter any longer. In spite of this, it is human nature to simply keep on living, even while knowing that there is no point. While this poem is quite depressing to read, it includes an intriguing message, beautiful imagery and metaphor, and is a nice, quick read.

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