The tone used in “Lady Lazarus” is gloomy and depressing. Nothing in this poem is positive or upbeat. Plath is obviously miserable, as one can see when reading this poem. She asks the question “Do I terrify?” By this she means, does her looks terrify? Her lifeless body is found days after she had just been laying there waiting to die. One could only imagine how horrible she may have looked and smelled. Of course she would terrify. One might believe that she wanted to terrify whoever found her. Throughout the poem she discusses other suicide attempts. Plath tells us how at the age of ten she almost died, she says it was an “accident” but the second ti

me she meant it. She goes on to say how easy it is to commit suicide anywhere, “It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put.” The reader might believe that she has actually tried to commit suicide in a cell or possibly just in a room in her own home. It’s hard to find anything delightful in this poem when she uses such a morbid and grim tone throughout the whole thing.

“Lady Lazarus” is filled with allusions. The title, in itself, is one. Lazarus is from the New Testament. Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus. The poem too is about a woman who can die and rise again. She refers to this at the end of them poem when she says “Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.” Here she is almost saying that even God can’t stop her, like she is above God and will come back to take over Him and the Devil. Another allusion comes from the Nazi references she makes at the beginning of the piece. She sates, “A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?------- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day.” These lines obviously refer to the Holocaust, her being Jewish one could imagine the impact it had to have on her life. Plath says that her face is featureless, just like the face of someone who is burned. This could have three actual meanings. One, she co

Some topics in this essay:
Holocaust It’s, Lazarus” Plath, Holocaust Jewish, Sylvia Plath, Bright Nazi, God Devil, Beware Beware, Testament Lazarus, “lady lazarus”, suicide attempts, Dark February, eye pits set, tone ambiguity, it’s easy, eye pits, nose eye, found throughout, tone ambiguity allusions, forms ambiguity, ambiguity allusions, nose eye pits, pits set,