Landowners
Landowners - meaning Summary
Alienation Versus Ownership
Plath contrasts the insecurity of a rented, rootless existence with the rooted stability of landowners. The speaker observes repetitive, lifeless houses from an attic and envies those who possess soil and a continuous place to belong. Ownership stands for indigenous peace and substance; without it the speaker’s life feels ghostly and transient, equating death with finally striking root and life with aimless wandering.
Read Complete AnalysesFrom my rented attic with no earth To call my own except the air-motes, I malign the leaden perspective Of identical gray brick houses, Orange roof-tiles, orange chimney pots, And see that first house, as if between Mirrors, engendering a spectral Corridor of inane replicas, Flimsily peopled. But landowners Own thier cabbage roots, a space of stars, Indigenous peace. Such substance makes My eyeful of reflections a ghost's Eyeful, which, envious,would define Death as striking root on one land-tract; Life, its own vaporous wayfarings.
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