#2: Explicate “Lady Lazarus”
Write a 4-6 paragraph essay that explicates a poem
Your essay should . . .
state a clear literary thesis statement
be focused and organized by 2-4 statements of analysis. Each one should be previewed in the thesis statement and then be developed by the body paragraphs of the essay.
be clear – use your best writing, but be pointed, economical, and efficient with your language. In any essay, fluff does no good, but in a timed essay, each sentence should have a clear and pointed focus. In other words, get your ideas on paper and focus on clarity over “sounding smart.”
Option 1: Plath, Sylvia. “Lady Lazarus” and/or “Daddy.”
As I noted earlier, your response to the Argue prompt, part V of the close reading workshop, can provide the germ of a persuasive essay on “Lady Lazarus.” However, you’ve only close read the first 8 stanzas of the poem; the full text includes 28 stanzas. So it goes with close reading, which is intended to account for only a small selection of literary text. That said, the knowledge you’ve produced in your close reading will invariably help you to produce different types of knowledge as you expand the scope of your interpretation.
In thinking about how to translate your close reading into an interpretation of the poem as a whole, you might look for other moments in the poem when Plath uses similar techniques to achieve a similar effect. Or, even better, look for moments when Plath uses different techniques to achieve a different effect. In writing a broader interpretive essay, you will likely need to expand your tight focus on the poem’s first eight stanzas, even if you intend to make an argument about the importance of those first eight stanzas. And be sure to acknowledge those elements of the poem your interpretation neglects or sets aside and any objections a reasonable person could raise to your interpretation. (In this way, the Reflect step can help you to write a more persuasive essay.)
Alternatively, if you decide to write a comparative essay, you might consider first doing a close reading of another text by Plath. For instance, you could close read the opening stanzas of “Daddy” and then put that close reading in conversation with the close reading of “Lady Lazarus” you have just completed. (The Norton Introduction to Literature has an excellent section called “Critical Contexts: Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy.’” See pages 1102–30.) The Pause & Practice exercises include a wealth of material for how to develop this sort of comparative essay.
