Sylvia Plath Essay -- Essays Papers

Sylvia PlathSylvia Plaths mother was the daughter of two German immigrants who lived in Massachusetts. She grew up highly educated and became a high school English teacher. Sylvia Plaths father had a doctorate in classical languages at capital of Massachusetts University. When Sylvias mother decided to earn her Masters degree at Boston University, Otto and Riri were married after a brief courtship, January 1932, in Carson City, Nevada. By mutual agreement, the mother immediately quit her job and became a homemaker. Her number one-class honours degree child, Sylvia, was born October 27, 1932. Sylvias brother Warren was born one and a half years later on April 27, 1935.True to her word, Riri Plath was a utilize mother and wife. Otto Plath devoted himself to authorship a book, so that the family had very elflike time for social life. Otto was also twenty years older than Riri and insisted on ruling the household with an iron hand. In fact, he even controlled the pecuniary resource of the house to the degree that he insisted on doing all the shopping, groceries and otherwise. As compulsive as he was, he was also a very engaging and proud father and Sylvia and Warren grew up feeling loved by both parents.However, in 1936, Otto began to get extremely sick. He refused to go to fool a doctor and he continued to work through a great deal of his illness, which the family believed to be lung cancer. Then in 1938-1939, Warren also became sick. First with pneumonia, and then later with asthma and other bronchial ailments. Riri Plath exhausted her resources trying to add care of the two sick men in her family. So Sylvia was frequently left with her maternal grandparents, whom she was very make up of. In particular, she was very coda to her grandfather, who she called grampy. In fact, she often in later writing would speak rough him as if he was really her father. The following excerpt comes from her story Among the Bumblebees and describes an mishap that act ually occurred, according to Riri, (Pg. 22) with her grandfather. First father would go for a be adrift himself, leaving her in the shore. . . .After a while she would call to him, and he would handle and begin swimming shoreward, carving a line of foam. . . .cleaving the water before with the powerful propellers of his arms. He would come to her and lift her onto his back , where she clung, her arms looked close to his neck, and go swimming out again. In an ecstasy of terror... ... and her and her husband settled back down in the United States. Both pursued their writing careers and worked off and on until they finally decided to return to London one time again. In February 1960, Sylvia published her first volume of poetry called the Colossus And new(prenominal) Poems. Both poets enjoyed continued success, but were even happier when on April 1, 1960, Sylvia gave birth to her first child, a daughter. A second child, a son, was born to the couple January 17, 1962. It was soo n after this second birth that the marriage showed signs of great strain. Sylvia eventually found out that Ted was seeing someone else and she divorced Ted and attempted to continue with a normal life with her two children. She continued to experience success as a writer, and published several more books of poetry. However, her and her childrens illnesses and an extremely terrible English winter, along with many lonely nights caused Sylvia to take her life on February 11, 1963.Bibliography1. Aurelia Shober Plath. Letters Home by Sylvia Plath. New York City Harper & row Publishers, 1975.2. The Academy of American Poets. Sylvia Plath. The Academy of American Poets. Online. 2000.