The Goring
The Goring - meaning Summary
Bullfight as Ritual
Plath's "The Goring" presents a bullfight as a ritualized spectacle where violence, ceremony, and art blur. The speaker details the arena's stained, oppressive atmosphere and the botched, repetitive choreography of capes and stabs. Despite the crowd's truculence and the mechanical routine, a disturbing aesthetic emerges: the moment of blood is described as redeeming the sullied earth. The poem echoes Plath's recurring interest in violence, ritual, and artistic instinct.
Read Complete AnalysesArena dust rusted by four bulls' blood to a dull redness, The afternoon at a bad end under the crowd's truculence, The ritual death each time botched among dropped capes, ill-judged stabs, The strongest will seemed a will towards ceremony. Obese, dark- Faced in his rich yellows, tassels, pompons, braid, the picador Rode out against the fifth bull to brace his pike and slowly bear Down deep into the bent bull-neck. Cumbrous routine, not artwork. Instinct for art began with the bull's horn lofting in the mob's Hush a lumped man-shape. The whole act formal, fluent as a dance. Blood faultlessly broached redeemed the sullied air, the earth's grossness.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.