Suicide Off Egg Rock
Suicide Off Egg Rock - fact Summary
Inspired by Fathers Death
The poem stages a man's walk into the sea at Egg Rock, rendered with blunt, physical imagery of heat, refuse, buzzing flies and a indifferent seaside. Sensory detail and repetition convey a mechanical, numbed subject whose inner insistence persists even as the world shrinks and corrodes. The work is commonly read in light of Sylvia Plath’s personal history, believed to be inspired by her father Otto Plath’s suicide.
Read Complete AnalysesBehind him the hotdogs split and drizzled On the public grills, and the ochreous salt flats, Gas tanks, factory stacks- that landscape Of imperfections his bowels were part of- Rippled and pulsed in the glassy updraught. Sun struck the water like a damnation. No pit of shadow to crawl into, And his blood beating the old tattoo I am, I am, I am. Children Were squealing where combers broke and the spindrift Raveled wind-ripped from the crest of the wave. A mongrel working his legs to a gallop Hustled a gull flock to flap off the sandspit. He smoldered, as if stone-deaf, blindfold, His body beached with the sea's garbage, A machine to breathe and beat forever. Flies filing in through a dead skate's eyehole Buzzed and assailed the vaulted brainchamber. The words in his book wormed off the pages. Everything glittered like blank paper. Everything shrank in the sun's corrosive Ray but Egg Rock on the blue wastage. He heard when he walked into the water The forgetful surf creaming on those ledges.
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