Plath's Use of the Language of Metaphors

As the title of Sylvia Plath’s poem implies, she describes pregnancy in metaphorical language. The poem contains nine lines and each line consists of nine syllables. The images of “a melon strolling on two tendrils” (3) could easily be mistaken for self-deprecating humor, but I doubt that is the author’s intention. The image of a melon moving on tendrils suggests something grotesque and repulsive to Plath. She also uses the metaphors of “elephant,” (2) “a ponderous house,” (2) and “fat purse” (6) to describe her condition. But there is more here than meets the eye. When elephants are thought to have no inherent worth, they are treated like a commodity and stripped of identity. From this grossly distorted perspective, their only value is their tusks. Similarly, it is not the melon’s delectable red fruit that is important; it is the seeds that are imbedded within it that are imperative to the perpetuation of the species. The fruit is merely a vessel for carrying seeds. The implication is clear.

The narrator of the poem, which I presume to be Plath, is no longer seen by her peers for who she is during pregnancy, but rather as a vessel for carrying a human embryo, no more important than a purse in which a woman carries her valuables. Plath is demoralized at losing her identity in a way that men cannot easily comprehend. She is on a train that makes no stops until its destination is reached. Plath is distraught because she realizes that pregnancy and childbirth are only the early stages of a much longer journey of self-sacrifice and child rearing. The poem and its author are nothing less than magnificent.