Summary and composition

In this section of the study guide, we will focus on the summary and composition of the poem “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath.

Summary

The speaker, Lady Lazarus, confesses that she has tried to commit suicide the third time and that she has failed, because she is still alive.

The woman compares herself with a Holocaust victim and depicts herself in horrific images that make readers view her as a decaying corpse. She then depicts herself as a freakish figure that people gather to see and she claims that she feels exposed. Then, she continues by mentioning the other two instances when she has tried to commit suicide and failed, and she also talks about her regret of being alive.

Finally, Lady Lazarus compares death to art and states that she resembles a circus freak that people want to see and wonder about. She also returns to the Holocaust metaphors and imagines being burned alive and rising from her ashes even more powerful than before, ready to hurt men.

Composition

As “Lady Lazarus” is a very complex poem, we will first deal with the poem’s outer composition and focus on its graphical division; then, we will focus on the poem’s inner composition and discuss its content in detail.

Outer composition

The poem “Lady Lazarus” is composed of 28 stanzas with three lines each (also called tercets). The tercets are mostly short and quick, and several stanzas are characterized by enjambment (the continuation of an idea from a stanza in another stanza). The second and third stanzas, for example, are characterized by enjambment:

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen. (ll. 4-9)

The poem lacks a specific rhythmic pattern, although there are several instances when anaphora or internal rhymes are noticeable. Anaphora, for example, can be seen in the...