A Literary Analysis of the Elm Speaks by Sylvia Plath Essay

Sylvia Plaths The Elm Speaks Dutch elm disease is one of the mostdevastating shade tree diseases the earth has ever seen. It is a wilt diseasewith an extremely high fatality rate. The disease is characterized by gradualyellowing of the leaves and defoliation. This is caused be a fungus which istransmitted from diseased trees to healthy trees by insects known as barkbeetles. In the 1962 villanelle The Elm Speaks confessionalist SylviaPlath compares her depressed emotional state with Dutch elm disease, whichkilled millions of Elm trees around the world. In the fourteen stanza poemwritten only one year before her suicide, a bitter Plath cries out with pain.The theme of depression originates from the loss of love in her marriage to TedHughes. The poem is extremely rich in metaphorical language from beginning toend. In many ways the poem is designed to fit the definition of a villanelle.The Elm Speaks is a free verse poem with chaotic meter. While living inLondon, Sylvia Plath had a massive elm tree in front of he house that became thesubject of this poem. In the first stanza, she mentions her great taproot, which is the very bottom of the elms roots. This line symbolizesthat she has reached the very bottom of her depression. She describes herdepression further in stanza two as a sea of dissatisfactions, or thevoice of nothing meaning it is raging inside of her. At the same time she hasan empty feeling which is driving her mad. Afterwards, in stanza three, shecompares love to a shadow, a dark reflection of someone which is not real andcan not be touched. Till your head is a stone, you pillow a little turfcreates the image of a grave stone in stanza four. The sounds of poisonsin stanza five refers to what Hughes, her husband, has done to her and how itburns inside of her killing her like arsenic. In stanza six she expressesthat she has been through a lot, but she has always gotten...