Metaphors by Sylvia Plath: Summary
The poem 'Metaphors' is by a modern poet Sylvia Plath. It is about the speaker's pregnancy. This is a nine-line poem with nine syllables and nine title letters METAPHORS. The speaker of the poem feels herself to be a walking riddle, posing a question that awaits solution: what a person is she carrying?
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
So when she walks slowly she looks like a melon and her legs look like two tendrils. She addresses the unborn baby. She calls it a red fruit growing round and full like an apple or plum. It seems as precious as ivory. It is fine-timbered in sinew and bone like a well- built horse. It is developing and getting larger like a loaf. The baby is like a newly minted money in the womb, which looks like a fat purse. The speaker feels her helplessness, because she is only a means or a stage. She is like a pregnant cow. During her pregnancy, she has satisfied her desire to eat sour things by eating a bag of green apples.
The passenger (the baby) has gotten into the train, but she does not know when it will get off. So she is surprised. The pregnant speaker feels herself like an unsolved question because she does not know the sex of the unborn baby.
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Sharma, Kedar N. "Metaphors by Sylvia Plath: Summary" BachelorandMaster, 28 Apr. 2014, bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/metaphors-summary.html.
