Brasilia
Brasilia - meaning Summary
Motherhood Under Mechanization
Plath contrasts modern, mechanized imagery with intimate maternal vulnerability. The speaker pictures impersonal "super-people" while her infant suffers, evoking bodily pain, suffocation, and a sense of erasure. Rural, bloody imagery and a plea to spare the child create a protective, urgent voice. Religious echoes—dove, glory—complicate redemption and annihilation, leaving the mother’s desire to preserve her baby central against depersonalizing forces.
Read Complete AnalysesWill they occur, These people with torso of steel Winged elbows and eyeholes Awaiting masses Of cloud to give them expression, These super-people! - And my baby a nail Driven, driven in. He shrieks in his grease Bones nosing for distance. And I, nearly extinct, His three teeth cutting Themselves on my thumb - And the star, The old story. In the lane I meet sheep and wagons, Red earth, motherly blood. O You who eat People like light rays, leave This one Mirror safe, unredeemed By the dove's annihilation, The glory The power, the glory.
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