After Richard Wilbur if a name comes in our mind about complex poet , it is not nobody else but Sylvia. She is too complex poet of the history of English literature as well as American literature. Ariel poem is one the poems in English literature which is the most complex poem , ever written in any literature, that why its critical analysis is very much hard work at all. Ariel is one of the Plath’s most complicated poems ,but also probable her finest single construction ,because of the perception and depth of its images. The ambiguities in the poem are mostly attributed to its title ,which has three fold meaning .firstly, it would call to the reader’s mind Shakespeare’s airy spirit in the “Tempest” a servant to Prospero and a symbol of Prosperou’s control of the upper elements of the universe, fire and air. On the bio graphical level ,”Ariel ” was the name of Plath’s favourite horse on home she weekly went riding .Robert Lowell and Plath’s husband, Ted Hughes seem to imply in their commentaries that the Ariel in the poem is the author’s horse.In a horse riding sexual feelings comes to in our mind , when man feels jumping , in shape of ups and downs same as feelings come in during sex course it can be assumed that Sylvia Plath remembers her sexual experience during her life ,because in her life she had raped by a Negro. After it , Sylvia herself goes to towards that Negro man who she had been her raped,and took enjoyment by him in way of sexual desire .As we know that ,she is frustrated woman in her life and takes pleasure by sexual desire.
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Ariel Poem Critical Analysis:-
As far as ” Critical Analysis” of the poem Ariel is cornered ,it has one more interpret ion in itself , and that is her pregnancy experience when calls out in this poem Ariel “
How one grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!
-the furrow splits and passes,
“Splits” is cut in to the two pieces , means here one body change is to into two bodies , it means that Sylvia remembers her pregnancy period when she was passing through this period .
One of neck I cannot catch,
Nigger -eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks Black sweet bold mouthfuls,
Shadow.
In above lines Sylvia criticized her awful experience that changes her the whole life Nigger -eye means , he is a Negro man who he had raped her , he is a ripest.
Hooks Black sweet bold mouthfuls,Shadow.means how this black man did her rape and after it, how she gains enjoyment by him.
But William Davies, another critic of Plath’s poetry maintains that Ariel is the symbolic name for Jerusalem. Ariel in Hebrew means lion of God and Plath begins the second stanza of the poem with the words God’s lioness, which seem to be a direct reference to the Hebrew and the Jewish Ariel.
In short, the poet combines the three references to Ariel in her poem and creates a context where each of the possible meanings enriches the other .She even seems to imply this when she says in the second stanza. “How one we grow .”Each of the three Ariel’s contributes its part to the totality of the poem and each of them merges into the others ,so that by the end of the poem. They are all one .The first five stanzas give an account of the poet’s ride on her favorite horse. The last 5 stanzas obviously move beyond the literal telling of taking a horse back ride and move into something which partakes of the mystery, where by he rider experiences something of the unity which is created between horse and rider,if not literally, at least metaphorical. The Hebrew reference to Ariel seems to imply that if purification or creation of something new in necessities suffering. The trifocals stanza structure parallels the trifocals illusions, to horse ,Ariel in Shakespeare and Ariel as a reference to Jerusalem. Ariel as a horse becomes a means of getting to the destination, even Shakespeare’s Ariel has similar implications. But Ariel the city of Jerusalem has got to suffer a great deal .Something new can only result from a lot of suffering the eyes of the sun could means the eye that the speaker herself is ,and morning carries the overtures of the mourning .Ariel comes to signify the whole history of the Hebrew race and the suffering ,the mourning.the word Cauldron mixes all of the foregoing elements together into a kind of melting pot of emotion, history and personal involvement .Thus, the poem takes on the richness and complexity we have come to expect from the poet .The difficulty of the poem lies in separating elements from one another .Yet that is also its themes.Plath seems to have always had a similar difficulty in separating one element of her life from another.
As far ,so far ,Critical Analysis of the poem Ariel can be analysed that Looked at from another angle Ariel is an account of the ritual journey towards the centre of life and death.Here are Plath perfects her method of leaping from image to image in order to represent the mental process. The sensuousness and the concreteness of the poem The Black sweet blood mouthfuls of the berries the glitter of sees, unmatched in contemporary .American poetry we see here ,touche and taste the process of disintegration , the horse emerging from the darkness of the morning ,the sun beginning to rise as Ariel rushes on uncontrollably across the countryside ,the rider trying to catch the brown neck but instead testing the blackberries on the side of the road .Then all the rider’s perceptions are thrown together, the horse’s body and the rider’s merge . She hears her on cry as if it were that of a child and flies to word the burning son that has now risen.The speaker of the poem is fully aware that her urgent desire for the power she has reserved for herself is destructive to her as a woman, for she refers quite deliberately to her journey as suicidal. What is ,perhaps , most tragic about the speaker of this poem and about Sylvia Plath as a creator of the speaker is that the impulse towards self disclosure ,the desire to move towards the eye eye/ I is of awareness, is destined to destroy both of them. in western culture ,the unclothed, female, whether it be the self disclosing creator or the specific and naked female subject, can be a symbol only of handicap and victimization, even, when the audience to the glorious and helpful unveiling is the self .Since all good poet use symbols express meaning, which are not adequately put in words ,Ariel ,too, remains highly suggestive because of the symbolic significance of certain words .Sylvia has not use symbols to cultivate difficulty in her style, rather they are legitimately used by her to make her poem riches and more meaningful. That is probably why Ariel suggests different things to different people. Some maintain that in Ariel , the experience of riding a horse becomes a metaphor for the process of writing a poem.
For many critics, the poem is emblematic of Plath’s attainment of poetic mystery .Ariel forges its on myth of perfection through the ecstasy of physical emotion,an ecstasy which is seem as transitory and self emulating .The poem seems to embody the event which it describes, seamlessly merging the separate identities of the horse and the rider through in enjambment ,melody, alliteration and internal rhyme .The symbolic reading of the poem as an affirmation of pure and androgynous creative energy would place it under the sign of Ariel in the Tempest. Yet apparently seamless moment of poetic becoming in aerial is a protected on a darker narrative of violence .The sensual implication of this imagery reinforce this reading. The female speaker here identifies with the horse ,a symbol of masculine sexual potency which, as the the Arrow ,becomes a Phallic image that drives into the eyes of the circle associated with female sexuality .Finally at the crisis, I/Eye metamorphosis into eyes,fuses with the cosmic, in personal awareness, or sheer of the sun itself. Specific identity like specific perception in the opening stanza melts in the cauldron of its own acceleration back to a formless monism. The Ariel remains Complex and suggestive, and therein , probable, lies the pleasure which the Speculative mind draws from it.
So, end of the the discussion , we can say that “Ariel Poem Critical Analysis’ has very much mystery in itself.
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