Lady Lazarus - Sylvia Plath

Plath's romanticizing suicide is part of what made her so famous, but why did she write about it so much? It is widely known that she attempted suicide numerous times in her life, the final attempt being successful, but what made her so volatile?

Experts say that a lot of her behaviour is rooted in her distain for her father's untimely death. She was only 8 years old when he passed and she was left with feelings of abandonment and she took his death personally, as if he meant for her to feel pain from his passing.

She often makes reference to her German heritage (from her father's side), much of the references being right in the middle of Lady Lazarus.

"A sort of walking miracle, my skin

Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot  A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen..."

Plath feels that she is being somehow persecuted by her father (who is of German decent), seeing him as a German officer and her as a Jewish person, his victim.  In a sense she is rejecting him as relative to her, saying in a way, that she is not a part of him, except for how he hurt her.

A large part of her desire to die came from feelings of a

bandonment, and her wonder with the world of killing one's self is demonstrated in "Lady Lazarus" as much as her reasons for her attempts.  The saddest part of all of this is that a few short months after she wrote this poem, she finally succeeded on her fourth attempt to take her own life at the young age of 30.