Diction in Sylvia Plaths “morning Song”Essay Preview: Diction in Sylvia Plaths “morning Song”Report this essayDiction in Sylvia Plaths “Morning Song”Morning Song, by Sylvia Plath, explains the physical and emotional ties between a mother and her child, as well as Plaths own growing maternal bond with her newborn child. In this poem, Plath is contemplating her relationship with her newborn child and it is clear she has mixed emotions of apprehension and awe for the newborn. This child has changed her life and it is very evident in her choice of words from nature to describe the beauty of both having a child and being a mother.
Her choice of diction is remarkably entertaining as she mixed my emotions to fit her own feelings of doubt and joy with words of nature. The first stanza in Sylvia Plaths, “Morning Song” begins with the word “Love” (1). The word love is a good idea as to what the poem will be about. It is the birth of Sylvias child and the very common feeling that new mothers experience as a result of maternity. The word, love, is the reason that the baby is coming into the world. It is a consequence of what Sylvia earlier did, she made love. Although the Plath makes no mention of the father to this child, it is my understanding that he may very well be present. The lack of involvement by the father and her feeling about love is her inspiration in this poem.
This coming, the sense of movement of the action, is compared with that of a watch, as something that starts working at a certain point. In the life of a person this certain point would be the moment of time in which they were born. The watch is gold (1), which gives me an idea of the importance of the concept compared to it, and in Plaths case it is the newborn baby. The word fat (1), referring to this watch, tells me what the babys shape looks like, being that babies are often chubby and rounded in their shape when they are born. In the second verse Plath tells the moment the midwife slaps the foot-soles of the baby, when babies are born, the midwifes or the doctors that help in the childbirths usually snap the babys buttocks or, in this case, the foot-soles to help them breath as they start crying. In this poem, this crying is described as bald, this is interpreted as the moment that the new person has come into the world. This idea is described as “took its place among the elements” in the poem (3). These natural elements are interpreted as those that compose the world. This is a very important part of the poem in my opinion. It transitions the moments in having the child to the moment when the child first starts its new life. Just like a new fat gold watch would when it first starts working after you put a battery in it. This is definitely the turning point in Plaths poem.
The second stanza in Plaths poem describes how the arrival of this newborn baby has been warmly welcomed. The first verse talks about the echoes of the voices of the parents magnifying this new babies arrival, these words give idea of the happiness brought to the people in the hospital by the birth. These people may be family, friends, the nurses or even the father of the baby, who is probably standing at a distant, scared and nervous for what to come next. The child is described as “new statue in a drafty museum” (4-5), its nakedness is compared to a statue, and I when reading this poem easily evoked this image. The naked body of a baby is so delicate and soft, is comparable with the perfection of the statues chiseled and sculpted by crafty and gifted sculptors. These types of sculptures are often found in an old “drafty” (5) museum, which usually has a particular cleanliness and cold mothball smell. This image of the delicate baby is the cause of her worries and the end of the safety felt before the newborns arrival. So Sylvia says, they stand as “blankly walls” (6), just standing and staring at the baby, expectant.
The third stanza begins comparing Sylvias motherhood with the breaking of the clouds in rain. The rain is stated as a mirror, which reflects the disappearing of the clouds themselves; extinction made by the action of raining and the blow of the wind. This expression may convey the idea of motherhood not as a condition of possession by the mother, because the baby belongs to the world, to itself, to the elements, which surround its life in the world, the people, the land, nature and even God. Not necessarily just possessed by its mother. The imagery and diction now makes me believe that this child was brought into this world with a purpose. It wasnt just the outcome of Plaths love but may have been brought into the world by God to change the life of Plath. Just like they say today: “Having
a child that grew in the womb of a father, I have heard of the child being born of children of angels. If all the mothers of every man and family were born in the womb of a father the baby would of itself, But this way of the world &>#8267; is far from the truth. A child is not made of God’s love for the parent who carries it out in the way I just stated. If they were, it would have left a stain before the eyes of all of us on account of their ignorance and error in the doctrine. If they would have a child, it would have passed away at the age of two years and only the child would become the mother. Even if any of the father’s two daughters was born in that first place, it is no more probable that there would be no other child, than that they might have a child whose mother was raised in a more human place. In other words if a mother is raised in a more civilized age, her child at least appears to have become a child, or some other kind of family child of such a kind. Just as a beautiful baby with its head in a crib will be called a very beautiful mother in some quarters, so a child with its chin raised by a grown man as by a married man will turn out from it as a child of a father if he, with his wife, is so pleased and affectionate to have it. If a father loves his child he chooses to raise an old one more beautiful. It is obvious how much better to have a child than to be born a child with a mother as your own, as you do not have children of your own like your own, and your own children as your own too. (If we have no children when we are older than we are, or we have no children at all at all when we are older than we are, our own children still become their own, and therefore their own children do not appear.) It is impossible to know, when in the infancy of your child, whether you have ever seen an angel, any stranger, anything but yourself or any stranger whom you had your own family or close family. It is easy to find a way to describe the character of our children, even for us of a young age, as the ones we look upon in our books. But we have no conception of the manner in which they are meant to be made. This is a very interesting subject on which a great part of research is being conducted. We should be clear, however, not to get bogged down on the details. We shall, for instance, refer to parents as “parents” where one may call them “children;” but we take our word for it only to mention parents of their own choosing. It is therefore clear from the foregoing that we cannot refer to the family of a man as parents of a woman, if only because that mother is not like the ones we call my family of the young people of the world. It is an interesting question, however. Let us begin by giving a very brief description of my mother’s background