Relevant Background

• Sylvia Plath was born in Boston USA and grew up in a comfortable middle-class home.
• She went to university in Boston and Cambridge, England. Plath was an excellent student. She suffered a nervous breakdown in college. She recovered but depression remained a big problem for her.
• Many of her poems are a terrifying record of her depression.
• At Cambridge University she met and married the British poet Ted Hughes. They settled in England and had two children. Then the marriage ended.
• ‘Child’ shows Plath’s tender feelings for her infant child and her mental illness.
• She committed suicide at the age of thirty in 1963, two weeks after she wrote this poem.
  

Summary

In this poem, Sylvia Plath expresses tender love for her infant. She longs to satisfy her child’s yearning [longing] for beauty and fun in life. Plath then reveals her own bleak [miserable] mood at the end of the poem.

Silvia Plath wrote this poem in four three line stanzas.

On one level the poem is about a mother’s love. In the first stanza Plath expresses love and admiration for the purity of her child’s eye. She wants to give pleasure to her child by filling her eyes with the colours and toys that normally delight children. She mentions ‘ducks’ as an example. Plath uses a lovely image of ‘zoo’ to show the exciting range of new experiences that she wants to give her young son.
In the second stanza Plath gives two examples of plants that her child is learning about.

In the third stanza Plath uses a plant image to show her child’s perfection: ‘stalk without wrinkle’. She regards her child’s clear eyes as a mirror that reflects the wonders of the world: ‘grand and classical’.

In the fourth stanza Plath reveals her personal troubles. She uses an image of twisting her hands in anxiety to convey her distress: ‘Wringing of hands’.

Plath then describes her dark life by comparing it to a ceiling without a star.
She concludes the short poem on a very unhappy note.

Themes

The poet shows how she is troubled in spirit because she feels she is living a life without light:
‘this dark ceiling without a star’.

In this poem Sylvia Plath expresses a delight in childhood wonder:
‘Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing’.

The poet shows that human emotions are complex. She can feel dread and fascination at the same time:
‘troublous’ and ‘absolutely beautiful’.

The poet contrasts happy childhood,
‘colour and ducks’,
to unhappy adulthood,
’ this troublous
Wringing of hands’.

The poet portrays two sides to her personality.
Here she delights in the beauty of a young life:
‘I want to fill it with colour and ducks’.
But later she feels horror:
‘troublous wringing of hands’.

The poet contrasts two types of aging:
‘wrinkle’ means to age poorly, ‘classical’ means to age well.

Tones

Sometimes the tone is bright and happy:
‘Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing’.

Sometimes the tone is humorous and weird:
‘Stalk without wrinkle’.
Her comparison of the child to a stalk is very unusual and amusing.

Sometimes the tone is excited:
‘The zoo of the new’.

Sometimes the tone is dark and depressed:
‘this dark ceiling without a star’.

Sometimes there is a tone of horror:
‘troublous wringing of hands’.
Plath is horrified by her own anxiety.

The tone pattern in this poem shows a sudden change from calm to panic.

Imagery

There are two dramatic images of fear. There are also charming images of the child and of nature. These images are contrasting [different].

In the first stanza, Plath presents a factual image of the 'clear eye’. Then she mentions the simple images of ‘colour and ducks’ to represent infant delights. Plath then provides an unusual comparison, a metaphor, in which she compares the interesting discoveries that await a child to ‘the zoo of the new’.

The ‘zoo’ is not actually there in the child’s room. It is a comparison image to show Plath’s attitude to her child’s sense of wonder.

Plath uses factual images from nature in stanza two. She mentions a ‘snowdrop’ and an unusual plant called ‘Indian Pipe’.

In the third stanza Plath uses metaphors [comparison images].

She compares the youth of the child to a ‘stalk without a wrinkle’. The word ‘stalk’ refers to a shoot or stem, meaning fresh and undeveloped. The word ‘stalk’ is a metaphor.

She compares the pupil of the eye to a ‘pool’ because that part of the eye mirrors the beauty that it sees, like a pool reflects its surroundings. The word ‘pool’ is a metaphor.

In the third stanza there are also contrasting images of aging.
The word ‘wrinkle’ refers to the creases, folds or lines that age and worry cause to the skin. It is negative aging.
The word ‘classical’ means traditional and time-honoured. It is positive aging.
The poet contrasts the two types of aging: ‘Wrinkle’ means to age poorly, ‘classical’ to age well. Note that both these words rhyme.

In the final stanza Plath provides a factual image of anxious twisting of hands. She uses the word ‘ceiling’ as a metaphor for her limited, closed in world. This metaphor is in sharp contrast to the earlier metaphor for her child’s world. That world is vast and open, like a ‘zoo’.

Sound effects

Alliteration [the repetition of first letters]:
‘without wrinkle’.
The ‘w’ sound here shows alliteration. This alliteration emphasises the perfectly smooth skin. Note how ‘w’ connects ‘wrinkle’ to ‘wringing’ in the last stanza.

Assonance [repetition of vowels]:
‘colour and ducks,
the zoo of the new’.
Note the ‘u’ sound repeated four times here:
the ‘ou’ in ‘colour’,
the ‘u’ in ‘ducks’,
the ‘oo’ in ‘zoo’
and the ‘ew’ of ‘new’.
This musical touch enhances [adds to] the meaning.

Rhyming:
There is no regular rhyming pattern. This may mirror the poet’s sense of disorder within her self.
There is one rhyme between lines and it is very significant. Note the ‘kle’ at the end of line seven and the ‘cal’ at the end of line nine. The spellings are different, the sound is the same. This is the only line rhyme. This rhyme emphasises the contrast that lies at the centre of the poem. Both the words ‘wrinkle’ and ‘classical’ are related to each other by the idea of a long time span. ‘Wrinkle’ means to age poorly, ‘classical’ to age well. The poet, although only thirty, is aging very poorly due to her mental illness. She wishes that life would develop to ‘a grand and classical’ image and not grow to a ‘wrinkle’ or ‘wringing of hands’. She hopes that her child will avoid her type of experience.

Rhythm:
The rhythm has a natural feeling with the run on lines and conversational words. The poem feels like a personal plea, naturally addressed to Plath’s child. The short lines, with one, two or three beats, give the poem a quick rhythm.