Ariel
Ariel - meaning Summary
Transformation Through Violent Release
Ariel depicts a sudden, violent shift from paralysis to ecstatic motion. The speaker moves through animal and equine imagery toward bodily release, fusion of self and movement, and an ambiguous union with death or dawn. Vivid physical sensations—tearing, blood, flight—suggest both sexual intensity and suicidal impulse. The poem reads as a moment of radical transformation tied to Plath’s emotional state, collapsing identity into an elemental surge.
Read Complete AnalysesStasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances. God's lioness, How one we grow, Pivot of heels and knees! ---The furrow Splits and passes, sister to The brown arc Of the neck I cannot catch, Nigger-eye Berries cast dark Hooks --- Black sweet blood mouthfuls, Shadows. Something else Hauls me through air --- Thighs, hair; Flakes from my heels. White Godiva, I unpeel --- Dead hands, dead stringencies. And now I Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas. The child's cry Melts in the wall. And I Am the arrow, The dew that flies, Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red Eye, the cauldron of morning.
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