The Full Text of “Lady Lazarus”
The Full Text of “Lady Lazarus”
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“Lady Lazarus” Introduction
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Sylvia Plath wrote "Lady Lazarus" in 1962, during a creative burst of energy in the months before her death by suicide in 1963. The poem alludes to the biblical story of Lazarus, whom Jesus famously resurrected. The poem's female speaker also dies and is resurrected—multiple times, in fact, and not always happily. Each revival is akin to a circus performance for a voyeuristic, "peanut-crunching crowd" that's hoping for a glimpse of the speaker's "scars." The speaker ultimately warns that she will one day rise from the ashes of her death and devour "men like air." The dark poem provides insight into a suicidal mind, a glimpse at the horror of being a woman in a patriarchal world, and a critique of society's twisted fascination with suffering.
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“Lady Lazarus” Summary
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The speaker declares that she's done something once again: every ten years, she manages to kill herself and come back to life.
This makes her a kind of living miracle. Her skin is so pale when she returns from the dead that it resembles a lampshade the Nazis made from the skin of Jewish Holocaust victims. Her right foot is as heavy as a paperweight.
Her face is wrapped, mummy-like, in a fine piece of Jewish cloth, obscuring her features.
The speaker calls out to her enemy, telling them to unwrap this cloth. She then asks if she frightens them.
Are they scared of her skull-like face, with its empty eye sockets and full rows of teeth? Her breath is sour with the stench of decay, but she says the smell will fade by tomorrow.
Very soon, the skin that rotted off while she was in her tomb will return to her body, where it belongs.
Then she will look like a happy woman once again. She's just thirty years old, and she has nine lives like a cat.
This is her third life. What a shame, she says, to destroy each decade like this.
The speaker then describes her resurrection as though it were a circus performance. See the million flashing bulbs, she says. People in the crowd, crunching on peanuts, push their way in to get a better view.
Her handlers peel the speaker's burial cloth from her body, like some kind of strip-tease.
The speaker addresses the ladies and gentlemen of the crowd, proudly pointing to her resurrected body parts—her hands, her knees.
Her body is still just skin and bone, but she's the exact same woman she was before she died. She was ten years old the first time she died. She hadn't done it on purpose.
The second time she died, it was intentional. She'd wanted to stay dead, too.
She sealed herself off from the world like a seashell. People had to repeatedly call out to her and then pick the worms off her body, which clung to her like pearls.
Like everything else, dying is an art form, a skill. And the speaker is extremely good at it.
She dies in ways that feel terrible and real. You could say that dying is her true calling.
It's easy enough to die in a cell (i.e., in a mental hospital or prison), the speaker says. It's easy enough to die and stay dead.
What's hard is the big, dramatic resurrection in broad daylight—the return to the exact same spot and the same face staring at her and yelling in the same old voice:
"It's a miracle!" That's what the speaker really gets a kick out of.
If people want to look at her scars, they'll have to pay. The same goes if they want to listen to her heart, which beats and beats.
And they must pay a whole lot to hear her speak or to touch her, or to buy some of her blood, hair, or clothes.
The speaker addresses "Mr. Doctor" and "Mr. Enemy" (presumably the men who brought her back to life).
The speaker says that she's their greatest achievement. She's their most prized possession.
She's like a baby made out of pure gold that, when dying, melts until there is nothing but the sound of screaming. She twists about and burns up. She assures her listeners that she knows how much they care about her.
She's been burned up into ash, which they prod at and stir around, looking for bits of flesh or bone even though there's nothing of her left.
All that's left behind is a bar of soap, a wedding ring, or a gold tooth filling.
The speaker addresses "Mr. God" and "Mr. Lucifer," telling them to watch out for her.
The speaker will rise from those ashes, her hair red, and she will devour men like they are nothing, like she's simply breathing.
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“Lady Lazarus” Themes
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Death and Suicide
Throughout "Lady Lazarus," the speaker uses extended metaphors of death and resurrection to express her own personal suffering. The speaker compares herself to Lazarus (a biblical reference to a man Jesus raised from the dead), telling the reader that she has died multiple times, and is, in fact, dead when the poem begins. However, through external forces, the speaker is brought back to life time and time again. For Lazarus, his resurrection was a joyous event, and one might assume that all such resurrections would be happy. But the speaker of the poem subverts that expectation: she wants to die. And so the efforts of those who want to save her—whether loved ones, or doctors, or whoever else—feel to the speaker like selfish, controlling acts committed against her wishes.
Obviously, the speaker is not actually dead, but uses this metaphor to demonstrate how unbearable life is and, in turn, explain (and perhaps justify) her suicide attempts. Thus, the reader can interpret the poem as the musings of a suicidal mind, with death being alternately presented as freedom, escape from suffering, and the achievement of a sort of peace.
Throughout the poem, the speaker often contrasts life and death by using imagery that subverts the reader's expectations. Note how the speaker describes life through disturbing images, such as comparing her skin to a "Nazi lampshade," or describing her resurrection as "flesh / the grave cave ate will be / at home on me." This imagery is surprisingly applied to the speaker's living body after it is resurrected. The speaker describes her experience of living as a kind of torture, almost as a kind of death—when she is brought back to life, her skin is like the dead skin of someone killed in the Holocaust, it is the skin of a dead woman forced back onto her living self. Thus, the speaker demonstrates how living, for her, is what death feels like for most people.
In contrast, the speaker describes death as a kind of calmness. For instance, when the speaker describes her second suicide attempt, the imagery evokes the peacefulness of the sea: the speaker tells the reader she "rocked shut," alluding to the rhythmic, calming waves of the ocean, while the "worms" or maggots that invade a decaying corpse are depicted as "pearls." The speaker also transforms into a "seashell," shedding her skin to become a creature with a hard, outer shell, implying that for her death offers blissful solitude and protection.
For the speaker, skin, which falls away in death, is a symbol that the speaker is still alive. When she is resurrected against her will, the “flesh the grave cave ate” reappears on her. The speaker's disdain for her skin seems to stem in part from the fact that the skin both displays and is the receptacle of the pain and suffering of life. The speaker at one point mentions others "eyeing .. my scars," capturing both how skin is scarred by trauma, but also how skin displays that trauma for the world to see. In this way, the speaker's skin subjects her to what she believes is an intolerable invasion of privacy. Death offers protection from that invasion.
When the speaker begins the poem, she reveals that she is currently dead—it can be assumed that she has tried to kill herself. She tells the reader she will be reborn as the woman she was. However, by the end of the poem, the speaker has transformed into a phoenix: “Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air.” Although this is seemingly a moment of empowerment for the speaker, this turn also conveys the hopelessness the speaker feels about her situation. The phoenix, a mythological creature, is known for its regenerative abilities. Thus, like the speaker, the phoenix dies and is reborn. However, because the speaker has transformed into a phoenix at the end of the poem, this could signify that the speaker is stuck in a cycle of dying and being reborn that she can neither escape nor control. In this way, the speaker expresses the intolerability of her life—though, logically, the reader understands that the speaker is not truly immortal, the speaker demonstrates that her life is so insufferable that it feels as though her life will continue indefinitely, through the exhausting patterns of suicide and being saved and brought back to a life she does not want. This pattern, in turn, also explains why death is so desirable for the speaker: because she feels as though she cannot die, and must suffer forever, death is the only solution to end her suffering.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-5
- Lines 10-19
- Lines 22-24
- Line 33
- Lines 35-56
- Lines 69-78
- Line 79
- Lines 82-84
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Gender and Oppression
"Lady Lazarus" is told from the perspective of a woman in a male-dominated society, and the speaker repeatedly blames her suffering on the men whom she sees as oppressing her. The poem suggests that the men mentioned are the ones—whether loved ones or doctors—who keep bringing the speaker back to life, suggesting how little autonomy women can ever hope to have in a patriarchal world. The poem's metaphors of death and resurrection, then, come to illustrate how society seeks to dominate women’s lives and bodies. The implication is that one of the reasons that the speaker wants to die is because, ironically, it’s the only way to exercise some semblance of control over her own life—which then makes the fact that she can’t die all the more agonizing.
Most often, the speaker’s oppression takes the form of objectification; society treats the speaker like an object whose purpose is to please others rather than a complete human being. The speaker even goes so far as to compare herself to a Jew in Nazi-occupied Germany. She calls her skin a "Nazi lampshade," her face a "Jew linen." The former is a reference to allegations that Nazis made lampshades from the skin of Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust, while this linen refers to the cloth used to wrap the biblical Lazarus in his tomb. Notice also that these are both domestic items associated with typical conceptions of femininity. Although invoking the Holocaust is definitely macabre and controversial, this comparison is meant to indicate the extent of the oppression the speaker feels.
Later, while addressing her "enemies," the speaker declares: “I am your valuable / The pure gold baby.” This metaphor not only reduces the speaker to someone else’s “valuable” item but also infantilizes her by making this valuable object a “baby.” The fact that the speaker’s body is so often seemingly put on display for others further suggests how women’s bodies are never really their own but instead used for the benefit/entertainment of other people. The speaker describes her suffering as being a spectacle for the "peanut crunching crowd," which is at once a condemnation of the macabre interest people take in others' pain and more specifically a commentary on how women's pain is particularly commodified; note the sexualized language likening the unraveling of the cloth covering her corpse to a "strip tease." Altogether, it’s clear the speaker doesn’t feel like she really has much say regarding her own life—and, in her mind, the culprit is the patriarchy.
Throughout the poem, the female speaker expresses particular tension towards several men. The speaker frequently uses apostrophe, directly addressing various figures: God, Lucifer, Doktor (German for “doctor”), and a more general Enemy. She calls them all “Herr,” which is German for “sir” or "Mr.," indicating that they are all men (it's also worth noting that Plath's father was of German descent). These men all represent the different kinds of male authority figures in the speaker’s life—religious figures, doctors or psychologists, her father—who all work to control her.
But the fact that the men referenced span from the prototypically good (God) all the way to the prototypical evil (Lucifer) suggests that these men can also be seen as more generally representing all men, or the entire male-dominated society in which she lives. Ironically, the speaker’s wish to die might then be interpreted as a desire to escape this world and its oppression. That is, perhaps, to the speaker, death represents a sort of freedom or reclamation of control over her own life and body.
And yet, when she attempts to commit suicide, the speaker keeps being brought back to life! As such, the speaker warns that, when she returns from death, she will “eat men like air.” The speaker intends to destroy the men who have forced her to stay alive, and thus will finally be able to die as she wants. The speaker must consume men—and perhaps with them, their power over her—in order to finally do what she wants.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 4-19
- Lines 25-34
- Lines 43-53
- Lines 58-84
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Suffering, Objectification, and Art
The speaker sardonically declares that “dying is an art, like everything else,” and repeatedly presents her suffering as a performance for an audience that's all too eager to watch the show. The poem is deeply critical of a society that uses other people’s pain for macabre entertainment. At the same time, it suggests that the speaker is complicit in this circus of suffering. Plath’s writing was often deeply autobiographical, and thus it’s fair to read “Lady Lazarus” as, in part, a reflection of her own complicated feelings about turning her pain into poetry.
The speaker describes her death and resurrection as being “theatrical” and describes how “the peanut-crunching crowd” pushes and shoves in order to get a glimpse of Lady Lazarus, wrapped like a mummy in death, being resurrected. “The big strip tease,” the speaker ironically calls this show, suggesting that people view pain and suffering in much the same way they do sexual gratification: it’s all just fodder for their amusement.
The speaker even charges the audience for access to her: “There is a charge // For the eyeing of my scars” and “For the hearing of my heart,” she says, and even larger charges “for a word or a touch / Or a bit of blood / Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.” Not only are people able to watch the speaker suffer, but they are also able to actively participate in her suffering. People’s twisted fascination with others’ pain, and their lack of empathy, seemingly know no bounds.
And yet, the speaker herself does seem to find some sense of empowerment from this spectacle, complicating the notion of it as purely exploitative or degrading. The speaker clearly feels oppressed by a society that objectifies her, and, in a way, decides to use that objectification to her advantage by charging for access to her pain.
The speaker, in the lines immediately following, addresses her enemies: “So, so Herr Doktor. / So, Herr Enemy. // I am your opus, / I am your valuable.” The use of the word “opus” here implies that the speaker’s “work” or “art” of death and resurrection is not her work, per se, but rather is the artistic work of her enemies. This makes sense if the speaker truly wants to die. The spectacle is created when she is continually forced to recover, to be resurrected; the speaker suggests that the performance is being forced on her, that she is being forced to star in it.
The performance could also be seen as a metaphor that represents the complicated dynamic between the artist and their art. The speaker describes the repetitiveness of the performance as exhausting, telling the reader that it's easy enough to die by herself, but it's the "theatrical comeback" to the "same place, the same face, the same brute / Amused shout" that truly "knocks her out."
Although the speaker's performance is both authentic to her experience, and a way in which she can derive a sense of empowerment from her suffering, she is also wearied by having to repeat her suffering over and over. This could reflect the struggle many artists have when they represent their suffering in their work, and come to believe that, perhaps, the performance of suffering is what makes their work popular or valuable to others, not what they have to say about it.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 25-34
- Lines 51-65
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Lady Lazarus”
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Lines 1-3
I have done ...
... I manage it——In the first tercet of "Lady Lazarus," the speaker introduces herself by telling the reader, "I have done it again." Though the reader does not know what "it" is yet, this opening accomplishes two things. First, it establishes the understanding that the speaker is engaged in a kind of cycle (she keeps doing "it again"), and that this cycle has endured across decades. Further this cycle involves something that the speaker wants to do. It's not something she does accidentally. Once every ten years she "manages" to accomplish it.
Once the reader comes to understand that the "it" that the speaker is talking about is her own suicide, the first three lines read differently. First, the poem's central extended metaphor becomes retroactively applied to these lines: the speaker is dead, and speaking as a dead person. Though, since a dead person can't actually speak, this "deadness" is in fact metaphorical. Second, the way that the word "managed" seems wholly insufficient in connection to a suicide—it makes suicide seem akin to getting to the bank before it closes—introduces the heavy irony that pervades the poem.
Line 1 is also the first instance of an end-stopped line, which is used quite frequently in "Lady Lazarus." The line ends with a period: "I have done it again." Here, the punctuation makes the reader take a pause to contemplate, leading the reader to ask, "What did the speaker do?" Although the line is fairly vague on its own, in the context of the whole poem, the end-stopped line contributes to the confessional honesty of the piece— the speaker of this poem has a strong and clear voice, and while the tone of the poem is often inclined towards irony, this speaker also wants the reader to pay close attention and understand her plight.
Lines 1 and 2 are also the first instance of the speaker's use of perfect end rhyme. Though the poem does not have a specific rhyme scheme, many of the lines do make use of end rhyme, either with perfect or slant rhymes. Here, the rhyme of "again" and "ten" assists in establishing the rhythm of this poem, while at the same time the rhyme of those two specific words emphasize both the duration and the repetition of the cycle of "death" and "resurrection" in which the speaker finds herself.
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Lines 4-5
A sort of ...
... a Nazi lampshade, -
Lines 6-9
My right foot ...
... Jew linen. -
Lines 10-13
Peel off the ...
... set of teeth? -
Lines 14-19
The sour breath ...
... a smiling woman. -
Lines 20-24
I am only ...
... annihilate each decade. -
Lines 25-34
What a million ...
... same, identical woman. -
Lines 35-42
The first time ...
... like sticky pearls. -
Lines 43-56
Dying ...
... knocks me out. -
Lines 57-64
There is a ...
... or my clothes. -
Lines 65-72
So, so, Herr ...
... your great concern. -
Lines 73-78
Ash, ash— ...
... A gold filling. -
Lines 79-84
Herr God, Herr ...
... men like air.
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“Lady Lazarus” Symbols
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Skin
The speaker's skin, which is referenced several times throughout the poem, is a symbol for the speaker's life, the pain that is so much a part of that life, and the way that her pain is both always on display to others and, at the same time, hidden.
The speaker states that, although she is dead, she knows that soon "the flesh / the grave cave ate will be / At home on me / and I a smiling woman." The speaker sees her skin as an indication of her status, living or dead.
Because the speaker wants to die, though, the skin becomes a symbol of her suffering. She demonstrates this when she tells the reader her skin is "bright as a Nazi lampshade." The controversial comparison illustrates the extent of the pain the speaker feels, which, to her, feels just as horrible as the pain the Jewish people felt during the Holocaust. This also demonstrates the horrors her body has suffered physically— the "Nazi lampshade" is a reference to the legend that Nazis used the skin from murdered Jewish prisoners to make lampshades. The speaker is suggesting that the cycles of death and resurrection she has experienced have put her body through a similar level of physical suffering.
The skin, as the outermost part of the body, is the boundary between the speaker and the rest of the world, and as such is a location of both physical and emotional vulnerability. But the skin is also a kind of canvas upon which the curious world can gaze and speculate upon the speaker's actions. The speaker captures all of these aspects of skin when she says that she charges people "for the eyeing of [her] scars." The scars indicate the speaker's physical suffering, the result of the trauma that the speaker's skin has suffered (perhaps by the speaker's own hand, or by other, unmentioned abuses). These scars can also be a metaphorical representation of the speaker's suffering, demonstrating that the speaker's emotional pain is so great, it leaves physical marks on the skin. Meanwhile, the speaker charging people to look at her skin captures the fact that the scars are not just something that the speaker can see; they are something other people can and want to see as well, as they look upon the speaker, who keeps trying to die and being made to live, as a kind of spectacle. The speaker tries to gain some benefit from the spectacle by charging for it, but it is not clear that such an effort makes up for the speaker's suffering being on display, or for a price being put on that suffering.
Finally, even as the speaker's skin is something that puts her on display, it also hides the deeper truth of her pain. Take another look at the line "the flesh / the grave cave ate will be / At home on me / and I a smiling woman." The return of the speaker's skin in this line doesn't just indicate that she has returned to life. It also hides the deeper truth of her pain. It transforms her from someone dead, from someone who wants to be dead, into what others see as "a smiling woman." Even as the speaker's scars reveal her past trauma in a way that others than gawk at superficially and cruelly, it hides the deeper foundations of the speaker's pain. The speaker, then, ultimately seems to see her skin as a kind of prison that defines her in ways she doesn't want to be defined, and as such can also be seen as a symbol for the speaker's sense of her position in society.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 4-5: “my skin / Bright as a Nazi lampshade,”
- Lines 16-18: “Soon, soon the flesh / The grave cave ate will be / At home on me”
- Lines 33-34: “I may be skin and bone, / Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.”
- Lines 57-58: “There is a charge / For the eyeing of my scars,”
- Lines 73-75: “Ash, ash— / You poke and stir. / Flesh, bone, there is nothing there”
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Phoenix
The phoenix is a mythological creature with regenerative abilities. It is commonly depicted as a bird with red feathers, and is said to burst into flame when it dies, rising back as a new life from the ashes of its old body.
At the end of "Lady Lazarus," the speaker warns her "enemies" of her upcoming resurrection, asserting that she will "rise with [her] red hair / And [she'll] eat men like air." Though the speaker does not explicitly mention the phoenix, it is generally understood that—because of the themes of death and resurrection, as well as the mention of "red hair" and an earlier mention in the poem of "ash, ash"— the speaker is evoking the imagery of the phoenix.
As mentioned, the phoenix is already a cultural symbol of death and resurrection—however, in this poem, the speaker adopts the phoenix as a symbol of female empowerment. Throughout the poem, the speaker draws attention to a problematic gender dynamic, heavily implying that her pain is caused by the men who continue to bring her back to life: God, Lucifer, her "Doktor." Initially, the speaker is only ever brought back as the same woman she once was, telling the reader, "Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman." However, by the end of the poem, the speaker has prophesied that upon her next resurrection she will transform into a strong mythological creature that can easily destroy her enemies, the men surrounding and controlling her.
However, the phoenix symbol in the poem is complicated, and can be interpreted in a variety of ways, and not all of them empowering. Because the speaker has transformed into a phoenix at the end of the poem, this could signify that the speaker is stuck in a cycle of death and rebirth for much longer than the “nine times” she initially described. In this way, the phoenix symbol can be read as expressing even more fully the intolerability of the speaker's life—though, logically, the reader understands that the speaker is not truly immortal, the speaker demonstrates that her life is so insufferable that it feels as though her life will continue indefinitely.
Another way to look at the phoenix is that because the speaker has not literally transformed into a phoenix, the phoenix could also symbolize the speaker's wishful thinking. There is little in the poem so far to suggest that the speaker can truly "eat" or destroy the men around her by any means, making her rise in the poem as a phoenix a sort of revenge fantasy. So while the phoenix is often used as a symbol of strength and resilience, in this poem it might be read as something that the speaker wishes she could attain, but in fact is beyond her reach.
Finally, the final image of the speaker transforming into a mythological phoenix can be read as a description of what the speaker is hoping to accomplish in this very poem, "Lady Lazarus." Of course the speaker can't literally transform into a phoenix. And it seems unlikely that the speaker can literally destroy the men who have subjected her to the cycle of pain and bitter anger in which she finds herself. But the poem itself offers the speaker a way to transform her pain and anger into something more powerful and effective. The poem itself offers the speaker a way to transform into a phoenix, whose rebirth is a triumph rather than a recurring tragedy. And by communicating both the depths of her pain, and identifying the men who are the source of her pain, the poem does enact vengeance upon these men—both within the poem and in the broader world in which the poem now makes them the subject of the world's critical gaze.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 82: “Out of the ash”
- Lines 83-84: “I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air.”
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Holocaust imagery
Throughout the poem, the speaker uses various images from the Holocaust as a metaphor for her suffering and a representation of her victimhood. Though controversial and potentially offensive to those who feel that the speaker's pain and experience can't possibly be equated with the wholesale and cold-blooded slaughter of millions of Jews, it is clear that the speaker uses this extreme imagery precisely because she does feel that it captures the intolerable situation of her life.
Early in the poem, the speaker describes her skin being as "Bright as a Nazi lampshade." The "Nazi lampshade" refers to a popular post-WWII rumor about Nazis making lampshades from the skin of murdered Jewish prisoners. The speaker implies through this image that her skin is similar to that of a Jewish person's during the Holocaust—that her skin is dead, yes, but also that her skin has been tortured, objectified, and used. Further, this description positions the speaker herself as being Jewish, which strongly implies that the speaker feels that she herself endures a situation much like the Jews did under Nazi Germany—that she is being oppressed, controlled, and brutally killed by a malevolent systematic force that is bent on her destruction.
The speaker later explains, "I turn and burn... // Ash, ash—" which could be seen as a reference to the cremation often associated with the German concentration camps of the Holocaust. Following the cremation, the speaker's enemy (and the reader) "poke and stir" the ash, finding no sign of the speaker other than: "A cake of soap, / A wedding ring, / A gold filling." Again, these specific images are meant to evoke the Holocaust crematorium; after the Jewish prisoners were killed, their valuables (often gold from jewelry and tooth fillings) were collected by the Nazis and melted down for profit. The "cake of soap" is a reference to the disturbing (and, unfortunately, not inaccurate) rumor that the Nazis used fat from the bodies of murdered Jewish people to create bars of soap, or could be read as a reference to the fact that Jewish prisoners were often told that they were being brought to a communal shower, when in actuality they were being herded into gas chambers to be murdered.
Again, in these allusions to the Holocaust, the speaker seeks to demonstrate the extent of her oppression by equating her own anguish and experience of oppression to that of the Jewish people, while also comparing her own "enemies"—the men controlling her—to Nazis.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 5: “Bright as a Nazi lampshade,”
- Lines 8-9: “My face a featureless, fine / Jew linen.”
- Line 71: “I turn and burn.”
- Lines 73-75: “Ash, ash— / You poke and stir. / Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——”
- Lines 76-78: “A cake of soap, / A wedding ring, / A gold filling.”
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“Lady Lazarus” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
Various allusions to world events and biblical stories are threaded throughout "Lady Lazarus," and are either used or subverted in order to enhance the speaker's metaphors of suffering, victimhood, and lack of autonomy.
In the title of the poem, the speaker of "Lady Lazarus" explicitly positions herself as the female version of Lazarus, a man who was resurrected by Jesus Christ in the Gospel of John from the Bible. She also alludes to Lazarus by calling herself a "walking miracle" in line 4, as the resurrection of Lazarus was considered one of Jesus's miracles, and when she mentions "Jew linen" in line 9, which references the sort of shroud that would have been wrapped around Lazarus's body. Yet the allusion is complicated. It directly captures the speaker's metaphorical description of herself as dying and returning to life, yet the allusion also informs the poem in the ways that Lazarus differs from the speaker. Lazarus, a man, is brought back from the dead once, and it is a joyous occasion. But the speaker, a woman, describes herself as being brought back from dead multiple times, and each time against her will. Thus, through this allusion, the speaker conveys her lack of bodily autonomy while simultaneously demonstrating the seemingly limitless power of her oppressors.
The speaker also references the Holocaust several times throughout the poem, equating her suffering to that of the Jewish people during WWII. In line 5, the speaker describes her skin as a "Nazi lampshade," and later in lines 76-78 evokes imagery from the mass crematoriums of concentration camps, listing items often stolen from the remains of cremated prisoners remains: "A wedding ring/ A gold filling." These allusions position the speaker as a victim of overwhelming and systemic oppression, using imagery from what is considered one of the worst atrocities of human history, while also demonstrating the cruelty of the speaker's oppressors by comparing them, by extension, to Nazi soldiers. (It is arguable that such comparisons used by the speaker are offensive, in the sense that the speaker's experience of patriarchal oppression can't really be compared to the experiences of Jews during the Holocaust.)
The speaker also potentially alludes to the popular nursery rhyme, "Ring Around the Rosie," when she says "Ash, ash—" describing what is left of her body in line 73. The nursery rhyme, oddly enough, is about death and dying, with lyrics that sing, "Ashes, ashes! We all fall down!" This allusion could be a sort of ironic nod by the speaker to the nursery rhyme, considering that the speaker wishes she could "fall down" and die, but is never allowed to.
Where allusion appears in the poem:- Line 4: “walking miracle”
- Line 5: “Nazi lampshade”
- Line 9: “Jew linen”
- Line 73: “Ash, ash—”
- Lines 76-78: “A cake of soap, / A wedding ring, / A gold filling.”
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Assonance
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Anaphora
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Apostrophe
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Consonance
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Enjambment
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End-Stopped Line
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Extended Metaphor
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Imagery
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Irony
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Repetition
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"Lady Lazarus" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Nazi lampshade
- Jew linen
- Annihilate
- Filaments
- Peanut-crunching crowd
- Brute
- Herr
- Doktor
- Opus
- Cake of soap
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(Location in poem: Line 5: “Nazi lampshade”)
The term "Nazi lampshade" refers to a post-World War II rumor that Nazis had made lampshades from the skin of Jewish people who were murdered during the Holocaust.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Lady Lazarus”
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Form
"Lady Lazarus" consists of 28 stanzas, with each stanza consisting of three lines (also known as a tercet). Although this particular poem does not follow any specific form, the tercets do slightly evoke the form of the terza rima, a poetic form that also consists of tercets and which was established by Dante Alighieri in the famous Divine Comedy. The terza rima also consists of tercets, with a rhyme scheme that often evokes a sense of simultaneous forward and backward motion. Though "Lady Lazarus" can't be called a terza rima, because it lacks both the typical iambic meter and rhyme scheme of a traditional terza rima, the form of the poem can be seen as a reference to a terza rima.
This subtle association between "Lady Lazarus" and the terza rima makes thematic sense, in a variety of ways. First, this poem, whose speaker is always circling through death and life, never going anywhere, but also never standing still, connects with the feeling evoked by the rhyme scheme of a terza rima. Second, "Lady Lazarus" depicts both a kind of hell and a kind of resurrection, and the reference to the terza rima connects it to the Divine Comedy, which of course also deals with notions of hell and heaven, punishment and redemption.
The use of three-line stanzas is also often associated with the Christian Holy Trinity— the Father, the Son, and The Holy Spirit. In this poem, God, Lucifer, and the Doktor are the three specific male figures mentioned, becoming an unholy trinity of sorts for the speaker because they all work to keep her from dying. Because of the poem's subject matter and religious references, the tercets could represent the overwhelming influence of men—and perhaps also of religious men—over the speaker's life.
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Meter
"Lady Lazarus" is written in free verse, and thus has no regular, consistent meter throughout. While the poem lacks a regular meter, though, it still uses meter, often in ingenious ways, to augment, add nuance to, and support the themes and ideas of the poem.
For instance, the poem often contains lines of iambic meter. Iambic meter is often associated with a more relaxed, regular sense of speech—however, in this poem, the iambic meter is more neutral than it is relaxed, and the speaker often uses it as a sort of "staging ground" from which the speaker can metrically leap, and then return, to create stylistic effects. For example, line 4, in which the speaker describes herself as a "walking miracle" is strictly iambic pentameter:
A sort | of walk | ing mir | acle, | my skin
but in line 5, the speaker alters both the image and the meter:
Bright as | a Na | zi lampshade
Rather than the consistent unstressed-stressed pattern of line 4, line 5 is metrically chaotic. Meanwhile, the shift from a clean to chaotic meter matches the shift from the purposely rather plain, or even clichéd line in which the speaker describes herself as a "walking miracle" to the extreme intensity of the following line in which she compares her skin to "a Nazi lampshade." The shift in meter mirrors and augments the shift in image and intensity.
The regular rhythm of iambic meter also functions ironically in the poem, as a way for the speaker to capture in the meter the way that she is forced to present herself as happy and normal on the surface when in fact she is filled with anger and despair. For example, when the speaker describes her resurrection in line 19, she tells the speaker she will return as a "smiling woman." The phrase itself is ironic, and the iambic meter contributes to the line's sense of irony by conveying that the speaker is putting on airs, pretending to be a happy, regular woman, when the poem insists otherwise:
And I | a smi | ling wo | man.
This line's regular meter mimics the speaker's false exterior. But also note that final, seventh, unstressed syllable of this line, formed by the second syllable of "woman." There is a name for a final unstressed syllable in a line of iambic pentameter (which would normally end on a stressed syllable). These single unstressed syllables are called "feminine endings," with "feminine" meant to refer to the lack of stress on the syllable. So, in this line in which the regular meter portrays a woman's false happy exterior, the final "feminine ending," which occurs on the second syllable of the word "woman," is an ingenious way for the poem to both hint at the agonized depths behind that smiling, regular exterior, and to make clear that this agony is founded on a gender oppression so deep that it even exists in the very terminology of the poetry she is writing.
The speaker, bubbling with, and sometimes overwhelmed by, anger and bitterness, also frequently uses spondees and trochees to increase the number of stressed syllables in a line in order to increase the emotional tension. For example, in lines 13-18, the speaker uses the rather rare bacchius (a metrical foot with an unstressed syllable followed by two stressed syllables) as she describes her about-to-be-resurrected-against-her-will body to her enemy:
The nose, | the eye pits, | the full set | of teeth?
The stressed syllables emphasize the skull-like images of the line, while the pattern of stresses communicates rising stress, frustration, and anger. The stressed syllables also draw attention to the consonance in the line, enhancing the /t/ sounds in the words "pits" "set" and "teeth."
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Rhyme Scheme
"Lady Lazarus" is written in free verse, meaning it has no regular meter or rhyme scheme. However the poem still makes use of both internal and end rhyme to accentuate the speaker's powerful voice, as well as to cue the reader in on the poem's themes of suffering and suicide.
For example, the first two lines of the poem do rhyme:
I have done it again.
One year in every ten,This rhyme on "again" and "ten," before the reader even knows what the poem is about, already puts emphasis on the speaker being caught in a cycle, and that this cycle has endured for a long time.
The poem then ends a number of the following lines with words that are either perfect or slant rhymes with this opening rhyming couplet: "skin" in line 4, "fine" in line 8, and linen" in line 9. Through these subsequent semi-rhymes, the speaker subtly echoes "again" and "ten," such that the poem is enacting its own cycle of rhymes, reminding the reader of the speaker's enduring and repeating agony.
Similarly, in line 38 the speaker reflects on her first suicide attempt, describing, "The second time I meant / To last it out and not come back at all." Of the 13 lines that follow, 10 end with either slant or perfect rhymes to the word "all:"
- "call" (line 41)
- "pearls" (line 42)
- "else" in the "el" sound of that word (line 44)
- "well" (line 45)
- "hell" (line 46)
- "real" (line 47)
- "call" (line 48)
- "cell" line 49)
- "theatrical" (line 51)
Notably, the switch to this sound begins when the speaker describes her first purposeful attempt to commit suicide (and second overall attempt) and the language and imagery evoke images of the ocean, reflecting the peacefulness of that hoped-for death. The use of these soft rhyming and semi-rhyming /l/ sounds mirrors the speaker's desire for a death without resurrection and captures the speaker's opposing views on life and death: life is repetitive and painful, whereas death is calm, full, and complete.
"Lady Lazarus" is also full of internal rhyme, which works to maintain the rhythm of the poem while also conveying the speaker's attitude. For example, Line 53 uses the same long /ā/ sound to represent boredom and exhaustion. The speaker explains her resurrection "To the same place, the same face, the same brute..." Here, the speaker demonstrates the mundane (and thus, loathsome) routine of her death and resurrection, emphasizing the word "same" over and over, accompanying it with similar /ā/ sounds to continue to evoke the sense of intolerable "same-ness."
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“Lady Lazarus” Speaker
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The speaker of "Lady Lazarus" reveals quite a lot about herself throughout the poem, because, in many ways, this poem is about her. The speaker reveals quickly that she is a 30-year-old woman. It can also be assumed from the context of the poem that the speaker is Lady Lazarus—this is certainly an ironic title that the speaker has given herself rather than her real name, and thereby ironically connecting her to Lazarus, the man whom Jesus resurrected from the dead in the Gospel of John from the bible. Because the speaker is a woman and identifies different male authority figures as her "enemies," it can be assumed that the speaker is suffering from gender oppression, which seems likely, in turn, to be one of the main reasons she wants to die.
The speaker is also, surprisingly, dead. Though not explicitly stated, the reader can assume from the first line, "I have done it again," that the speaker has killed herself. Of course, the speaker is not literally dead— although the speaker makes it very clear that she does want to die—rather it seems that she has once again attempted to take her own life or expressed the desire to do so—and that her "resurrection" has been the refusal of the men around her (whether father, husband, doctors, or anyone else) to actually let her die. The speaker uses death and resurrection as an extended metaphor to represent the extremity of her suffering, the lack of control that she has over her own life (and death).
It can also be assumed that the speaker of the poem is Sylvia Plath, because many of the poem's details are directly related to events in her life— specifically, her age, gender, and the suicide attempts that are referenced.
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“Lady Lazarus” Setting
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The setting of this poem is unclear, with the speaker crafting a landscape of metaphor and emotion. There are no mentions of any environment, nor does the speaker ever identify a geographic location. Because the speaker is dead (at least, metaphorically speaking) it could be assumed that the speaker is in some sort of Limbo or purgatory, waiting for the inevitable return to her body.
One could argue that the setting of the poem is the speaker's body— though this is not technically a place, per se, the speaker's body is often the central point of the poem, and where all the poem's action occurs.
In regards to the era, it could be safely assumed that this poem takes place in 1964. The age of the speaker, along with several other autobiographic details, indicate that the speaker is Sylvia Plath— in which case, these details imply that the poem takes place at the same time it was written. At the very least, based off of the multiple Holocaust references, one can assume that the poem was written not long after World War II, which ended in 1945.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Lady Lazarus”
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Literary Context
"Lady Lazarus" was published in Sylvia Plath's 1966 posthumous collection, Ariel. Many of Plath's most well-recognized works appear in Ariel, such as "Daddy," "Tulips" and "Ariel," the latter of which shares its name with the collection. Ariel is considered a hard turn from the much lighter, less personal poems from Plath's first collection The Colossus (1960), as it dives into much darker and intimate themes of mental illness and suicide. The collection also covers some similar themes as Plath's semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, which was published in 1963.
Sylvia Plath was considered a "Confessional" poet. Confessionalists were known for deeply personal poetry that delved into previously taboo topics such as mental health and sexuality. Plath cited both Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton as being major influences on her work, as both poets often explored similar themes in their work. Plath was also influenced by the work of Dylan Thomas. Because Plath's estranged husband, Ted Hughes, inherited the entirety of Plath's work upon her death (he edited Ariel extensively), Hughes's influence likely permeates Plath's work in innumerable ways.
Sylvia Plath's work was often divisive—though considered a talented writer, the themes and content of her work often inspired criticisms that she engaged in melodrama and self-pity. Others have argued that this interpretation of her work is the result of reading the autobiographic details too closely or of refusing to recognize the actual depth and reality of Plath's pain.
Historical Context
Much of Plath's childhood occurred during World War II, which began in 1939, when Plath was six, and ended when Plath was around twelve. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, as in addition to the brutal fighting and first use of nuclear weapons, it involved the Holocaust: the genocide of the Jewish people by Nazi Germany that resulted in the systematic murder of around six million Jews. The Holocaust is often considered "unique" in its murderous scope and specificity, and it had a profound impact on Plath. Imagery from concentration camps appears in several of Plath's poems, often referred to as her "Holocaust poems."
Plath's poetry also appears to react against the Cult of True Womanhood, or the Cult of Domesticity. Following WWII (during which women often worked, by necessity, outside the home while the men fought in the war), women were encouraged to return to the home, fulfilling their primary role as wives and mothers. Sylvia Plath, as a writer and academic, found these notions of womanhood oppressive and rejected them throughout her poetry. Many women also experienced a deep and profound unhappiness from their lack of autonomy, described by feminist writer Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique (1963) as "the problem that has no name." It is likely that Plath suffered from a similar problem: although Plath experienced career success as a poet, she still experienced the problematic expectations of being a dedicated wife and mother, which likely exacerbated her mental illness. Thus, much of Plath's writing involves a complicated experience of motherhood and femininity, with imagery that focuses on domestic items.
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More “Lady Lazarus” Resources
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External Resources
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Biography — Poetry Foundation's brief biography of Sylvia Plath.
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Plath Interview — Audio of Sylvia Plath's 1962 interview with Peter Orr, discussing her poetry career, influences, and her poetic interests.
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Sylvia Plath Crash Course — An episode of Crash Course in which author John Green explores Sylvia Plath's poetry.
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"Lady Lazarus" Audio — An audio clip of Sylvia Plath reading "Lady Lazarus." This reading includes a few differences from the published version— after line 12's "Do I terrify?" Plath adds, "Yes, yes, Herr Professor, it is I. Can you deny?" Plath also reads an additional line, "I may be Japanese," which follows line 33's "I may be skin and bone."
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Plath's Letters — An article describing the publication of Plath's many, many letters of correspondence between her mother and others.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Sylvia Plath
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