The Full Text of “The Arrival of the Bee Box”
The Full Text of “The Arrival of the Bee Box”
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“The Arrival of the Bee Box” Introduction
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“The Arrival of the Bee Box” is a poem by Sylvia Plath, one of the most prominent American poets of the 20th century. It was published in her bestselling collection Ariel, and forms parts of a sequence of poems that involve bees in some shape or form. In the poem, the first-person speaker receives the bee box that she “ordered.” She contemplates her power over the box and the bees, variously feeling like does and doesn’t want it. By the end, she resolves to set the bees free—but will only do so “tomorrow,” ensuring the poem ends on a note of irresolution.
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“The Arrival of the Bee Box” Summary
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The wooden bee box that I ordered has arrived. It’s square and really heavy, and kind of reminds me of a small coffin for a little person or a square-shaped baby. Well, it would if there weren't so much noise inside of it.
Because the box is locked and unsafe, I’ll have to keep it with me all through the night and always stay by its side. It’s hard to see what is inside as there are no windows, just a small eye-hatch. Nothing can get out.
I look inside through that small eye-hatch. It’s so dark in there. It seems like it's full of the hands of African slaves on a slave ship, made tiny for export, angrily pushing against each other and fighting for space.
How could I possibly set them free? The noise is the thing that frightens me most, sounding as it does like some nonsense language. It sounds like an angry crowd in ancient Rome—harmless individually, but in a group—yikes!
I listen closer to the noise that's like angry Latin. I could never be a leader like Caesar. The truth is, I've bought a box full of total crazies. Maybe I’ll return them. If I don’t feed them, they will die—it’s up to me.
Are they hungry? If I set them free, would they forget about me? What if I simply let them loose and then just faded into the background like a tree? Perhaps like a laburnum with its yellow flowers, with cherry trees nearby.
They'd probably just ignore me while I was dressed in my protective bee-keeping suit with its funeral-veil-like head covering. I can’t help them make honey, so what use am I? Tomorrow I promise to be a good master and let them go.
Anyway, the box won’t last forever.
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“The Arrival of the Bee Box” Themes
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Power
“The Arrival of the Bee Box” is a complex poem without one clear interpretation. It can be taken literally (as in, the speaker has recently come into possession of a box of bees) or metaphorically (with the box being a symbol for the speaker’s emotions and creative potential, as it has often been interpreted). Either way, the poem is undoubtedly about power. Indeed, the poem presents different attitudes toward power: sometimes the speaker seems to be intoxicated by that power, while at other times it makes her feel anxious and fearful. Power and control, the poem suggests, are at once exciting and frightening.
At first, the power dynamic between the speaker and the bees in the box is clear. It is the speaker who “ordered” the box (both in the sense of having bought it and having the ability to tell it what to do). The box is a passive object and whatever is contained within can’t get out without the speaker’s deliberate action. The speaker, then, would appear to hold all the power in this situation.
But this power also unnerves the speaker. She's aware of her responsibilities, knowing that she's been cast as a kind of god that has control over whether the bees live or die. This power seems frightening for the speaker—the box is both "locked" and "dangerous"—yet she "can't keep away from it." If the box represents a manifestation of the speaker’s power, then this suggests that power itself is dangerously tempting and alluring.
To that end, it seems the speaker's own desire for power both thrills and frightens her. The early stages of the poem, then, see the speaker trying to get close to the box while also maintaining a safe distance from its contents. This neatly encapsulates her complicated feelings towards her own power. She looks inside, but is appalled by the contents—in part because she knows that she controls what happens to them.
The poem then widens its discussion of power, touching on slavery and the Roman Empire. The speaker compares the bees—no doubt problematically, for contemporary readers—to African slaves hemmed in on a ship for export. Slavery, of course, is perhaps the ultimate expression of power, one group of people forcing labor onto another against their will. In some way, the speaker identifies with the slave master here, knowing that she has full control over what happens to the bees.
The poem also mentions Julius Caesar, Rome’s infamous ruler. The speaker occupies a position of power that is in its small way analogous to both of the above examples. But the discomfort this provokes (the speaker says, "I am not a Caesar") suggests she also senses the injustice of such dominance (which, not incidentally, has historically often been male; some critics interpret the poem as Plath's way of reflecting on and ultimately rejecting the kind of patriarchal power that dominates society).
Above all, power seems to be confusing, shifting the speaker’s mind this way and that. The poem’s ending plays out these contradictory thoughts. On the one hand, the speaker imagines setting the bees free—thereby removing the speaker's power from the situation altogether. The speaker pictures turning into a tree, becoming a passive object and giving the bees back their freedom. Unlike the slave master or Caesar, then, the speaker feels a limit to her willingness to hold onto absolute power (which some critics interpret as a comment on the destructiveness of male power).
With this in mind, the speaker resolves to be a “sweet God” and set the bees free. But this freedom won’t be granted until “tomorrow”—and the poem offers no assurance that the speaker really will set the bees free. Perhaps, then, the desire for power itself maintains a stronger hold on the speaker than she would like to admit.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Line 1
- Lines 6-10
- Lines 11-20
- Lines 21-25
- Lines 26-30
- Lines 31-36
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Death and Psychological Turmoil
Though “The Arrival of the Bee Box” makes sense on a literal level, it’s often interpreted along more metaphorical lines too. Given Plath’s struggles with mental illness and eventual death by suicide, some critics read the box as a symbol for psychological stress and anguish—the kind of manic and depressive thoughts that can get the better of people.
Indeed, the box seems to embody the more out-of-control side of the human mind—which is maybe why it seems so "dangerous" to the speaker, and why the speaker wishes to keep it locked up tight. Opening the box, in this reading, would be akin to the speaker letting her mind run wild—letting her anger and anguish loose on the world, and on herself. If she is to survive, the poem suggests, she must keep the box—and her emotions—shut tight.
Generally speaking, the box thus represents a kind of claustrophobia that reflects the speaker’s state of mind. Indeed, she projects a number of feelings onto the box, feelings which stem from stress and pain and which she seems to want to keep shut tightly away. The strange image of a “square baby” in the first stanza might signal anxiety of motherhood. Later, the third stanza—which likens the bees to African slaves—speaks to aggression and the feeling of being held captive. The “Roman mob” of the following two stanzas seems to suggest both anger and an anxiety about being misunderstood by the surrounding world (“unintelligible syllables”).
In the sixth stanza, the speaker imagines turning into a tree and being “forg[otten]”; in the following stanza she imagines being “ignore[d].” This is a complex sentiment that both seems to suggest a sense of worthlessness and the desire for anonymity as a kind of comfort. That’s why the last line seems so harrowing—mentioning the “temporar[iness]” of the box gestures towards death as a kind of escape from the pains of living.
To that end, note how the poem begins with a brief reference to death (“the coffin of a midget”). Labeling the box a coffin suggests that the speaker is at once afraid of and drawn to death—afraid of life ending, but drawn to the supposed relief it offers. Opening the box, in this reading, and setting those thoughts free would be like giving in to her all her pain, fear, anger, and sorrow. This is something that might happen anyway; the idea of the box being temporary suggests that the speaker is not actually in control of these darker parts of her mind, or at least that she won't be forever.
It’s also worth noting that some critics view the box as a symbol of creativity—and the difficulties of harnessing it; in this reading, the speaker asserts that she has absolute power over these creative impulses, but towards the end of the poem it seems like she is only trying to convince herself of this. Both readings, ultimately, thus relate to the difficulty of taking control over one's own life and mind.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-5
- Lines 6-10
- Lines 11-20
- Lines 21-36
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Arrival of the Bee Box”
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Lines 1-5
I ordered this, ...
... din in it."The Arrival of the Bee Box" begins, on a literal level, with a wooden box of live bees that the speaker has ordered. The poem opens by placing the bee box front and center. Indeed, no action really takes place in the poem—it is all about the speaker's thoughts as she contemplates the box and, in particular, her power over it.
The spare, simple language of the first line ensures that the image of the box is crystal clear:
I ordered this, clean wood box
The caesura after "this" creates a moment of pause or reflection as the speaker presents the "this" that she's ordered. It's almost as if she's talking to the box itself; note how different the line might feel were there no caesura there:
I ordered this clean wood box
Feels a bit less purposeful, doesn't it?
Moving on to the poem's second line, the clear assonance/internal rhyme of "square" and "chair" captures the imposing the sturdiness of the box, these sounds dominating the line like the box dominates the room. The box's heaviness foreshadows the way that it will provoke complicated thoughts in the speaker's mind.
Lines 3 to 5 darken the poem's tone:
I would say it was the coffin of a midget
Or a square baby
Were there not such a din in it.Both images here are intentionally bizarre—the "coffin of a midget" or a "square baby." They establish the presence of both life and death in the poem, which plays an important role in the speaker's thoughts about the box.
The poem here increases its poetic volume to match the loud noise emanating from the bees in the box. As highlighted above, consonant /n/ sounds and assonant /i/ sounds bring the bees's "din" to life. The grammar of this sentence is also interesting. The word "would" gives these lines a sense of hesitation and doubt, giving a glimpse into the speaker's state of mind.
Indeed, as the poem develops, the box comes to represent all kinds of difficult emotions and psychological problems. The bees inside the box can be read as symbolizing the speaker's turbulent mind inside her body. And as hinted at by the use of the word "coffin," the speaker is haunted by the fact that her mind and body must die someday.
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Lines 6-10
The box is ...
... grid, no exit. -
Lines 11-15
I put my ...
... black, angrily clambering. -
Lines 16-20
How can I ...
... my god, together! -
Lines 21-25
I lay my ...
... am the owner. -
Lines 26-30
I wonder how ...
... of the cherry. -
Lines 31-36
They might ignore ...
... is only temporary.
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“The Arrival of the Bee Box” Symbols
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The Bee Box
There's really only one object in "The Arrival of the Bee Box"—the box itself. In fact, the whole poem revolves around the speaker's thoughts about the box. Symbolically speaking, the box is an ambiguous presence, and intentionally so. On a literal level, it's just a box filled with bees. But the way the speaker thinks about makes the box seem like a container for more than that. Indeed, the speaker projects her own anxieties and fears about life onto the box, associating it with a whole world of negative emotions (like anger). In this sense, then, the box can be read as a representation of the human mind—and its capacity for fear, suspicion, and worry.
This idea could even be extended to include the entirety of being human—so not just the mind, but the body too. The last line—"The box is only temporary"—seems to hint at the way that death offers an escape from the difficulties of life (with the fact that life is fleeting offering some kind of solace).
But such is the power of the box as a symbol that there are other possible interpretations too—and though these might appear drastically different from one another, they need not be considered mutually exclusive. Some critics, for example, view the box as a representation of female creativity—and Plath's wish to harness her own powers. Yet another symbolic association is Pandora's Box, which stems from Greek mythology. Put simply, this was a box that contained all of the world's evil, and the non-specific sense of threat that arrives with the box supports this idea.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-5: “I ordered this, clean wood box / Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift. / I would say it was the coffin of a midget / Or a square baby / Were there not such a din in it.”
- Line 6: “The box is locked, it is dangerous.”
- Lines 7-8: “I have to live with it overnight / And I can't keep away from it.”
- Lines 9-10: “There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there. / There is only a little grid, no exit.”
- Lines 11-12: “I put my eye to the grid. / It is dark, dark,”
- Line 23: “a box of maniacs.”
- Line 28: “If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.”
- Line 36: “The box is only temporary.”
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The Laburnum / Cherry Trees
Lines 28-30 are pretty much the only point in the poem in which the speaker offers up an image that isn't entirely focused to the box. This image is actually centered on herself—she imagines turning into a tree, possibly a laburnum or cherry tree. She might also be looking out of the window at actual trees in the garden, imagining being one of them (Plath and Hughes did have a laburnum tree in the garden of the Devon home).
This transformation of a woman into a tree is linked to the classical myth of Daphne. There are different versions of this myth, but essentially it boils down to this: Eros, god of love, is insulted by Apollo. In revenge, he shoots Apollo with an arrow that makes him fall in love with Daphne (still in female form), and shoots Daphne with one that prevents her from returning that love. Daphne turns into a tree to escape Apollo's unwanted affections.
Perhaps, then, the subtle allusion to this myth in the poem relates to the suppression of female power—or the speaker's anxiety over how to best utilize that power (the fact that the speaker references the "petticoats of the cherry" supports this idea, given that a petticoat is a type of undergarment worn beneath a skirt or dress). It's worth noting, too, that the laburnum tree is highly poisonous—though beautiful to look at it, almost every part of the tree is toxic. This, then, mixes together attraction and threat—two twin factors throughout the speaker's thoughts towards the bee box.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 28-30: “If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree. / There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades, / And the petticoats of the cherry.”
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Moon Suit and Funeral Veil
"Moon suit and funeral veil" is the way that Plath chooses to describe the typical protective suit that people were when handling bees. It's a humorous description with some subtle symbolic ideas behind it. First of all, the "moon suit" is in image taken, of course, from space travel. This relates to the extra-terrestrial, the idea of being alien—something which the speaker feels in relation to the bee box and its contents. The suit, then, suggests the unbridgeable gap between the speaker and the bees—their inability to communicate or understand one another.
The funeral veil specifically refers to the mesh covering that the bee-keeper wears over the face. It is indeed veil-like in appearance, and the association between these two items of clothing is telling with regard to the speaker's state of mind. Indeed, the reader already knows that she has death on her mind from the mention of a coffin in line 3. The funeral veil—with its symbolic implication of death—thus links the ending of the poem with its beginning, demonstrating death to be a subtle but consistent presence in the speaker's mind.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 31-32: “They might ignore me immediately / In my moon suit and funeral veil.”
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“The Arrival of the Bee Box” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
“The Arrival of the Bee Box” uses allusion throughout, with some instances more clear-cut than obvious.
The first allusion to consider is one that applies in general to the whole poem. It’s possible that the bee box represents an allusion to Pandora’s box. In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first mortal woman. Zeus gave her a box containing evil in all its various forms, which she then opened (thus bringing about the presence of evil on Earth). If the box itself is read as a metaphor for the human mind, then perhaps this subtle allusion relates to difficulties of life and their related psychological troubles. Opening up the mind releases all sorts of troubles on the world.
In the third stanza, the poem alludes to the African slave trade. This was the horrendous practice of the enslavement of African men, women, and children by slave traders. The allusion here is uncomfortable, because it seems to equate blackness with physical aggression. At the same time, it does speak to the way that power can corrupt people.
In the fourth and fifth stanzas, the poem alludes to Ancient Rome, and in particular the emperor Julius Caesar. This is another example of power, relating both to the authority of the emperor (the speaker) and the collective strength of the mass population (the “mob”).
The final allusion is quite subtle, but is supported by other poems from the same collection (Ariel). In the sixth stanza, the speaker entertains the idea of turning into a tree. This is a reference to the Greek myth of Daphne, who asks to be turned into a tree in order to avoid unwanted male attention. This relates to the speaker’s desire—or one of her various desires—to fade into the background (and give up her power over the box).
Where allusion appears in the poem:- Lines 11-25: “I put my eye to the grid. / It is dark, dark, / With the swarmy feeling of African hands / Minute and shrunk for export, / Black on black, angrily clambering. / How can I let them out? / It is the noise that appalls me most of all, / The unintelligible syllables. / It is like a Roman mob, / Small, taken one by one, but my god, together! / I lay my ear to furious Latin. / I am not a Caesar. / I have simply ordered a box of maniacs. / They can be sent back. / They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.”
- Lines 28-30: “If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree. / There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades, / And the petticoats of the cherry.”
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Consonance
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End-Stopped Line
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Enjambment
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Metaphor
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Repetition
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Rhetorical Question
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Simile
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"The Arrival of the Bee Box" 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.
- Din
- Swarmy
- African Hands
- Export
- Clambering
- Unintelligible
- Mob
- Caesar
- Laburnum
- Blond colonnades
- Petticoats
- Moon suit
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(Location in poem: Line 5: “din”)
A loud chaotic noise.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Arrival of the Bee Box”
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Form
“The Arrival of the Bee Box” consists of 36 line mostly broken up into five-line stanzas, a.k.a. quintains. There are seven of these in total. The final stanza then consists of a single, standalone line—emphasizing its importance and setting it apart from everything that comes before it.
This isn’t a traditional poetic form—as is typical of Plath, the poem is written in free verse. But the uniformity of the stanza length does have an important effect on the poem. It seems to help reflect the speaker’s mind, making the poem unfold in tense, contained episodes. Indeed, nothing really happens in the poem except for the speaker’s contemplation of the bee box—and her thought process is complicated, moving through different attitudes as the poem unfolds. The separation into stanzas helps with this movement through the speaker’s mind, each stanza reflecting a new set of thoughts.
The form also reflects the intensity with which the speaker considers the bee box. In the first stanza she focuses on its physical appearance, and then on its physical presence in the second. She then looks into the box in the third stanza, before shifting to listening to the box in stanzas 4 and 5.
In the last two quintains, the speaker’s feelings towards the bees in the box move closer to empathy. She starts to regret the power she has over the box, but doesn’t disown it completely (promising only to do so “tomorrow”).
The last line is set out in a stanza of its own, emphasizing its importance and creating a dramatic ending. Indeed, this line seems to reframe the rest of the poem along the lines of a metaphor that considers the box as a stand-in for a troubled mind, or even human life itself (the temporariness of the box signaling the escape that death represents).
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Meter
“The Arrival of the Bee Box” is a free verse poem that doesn’t use regular meter. Perhaps a strict meter would feel too neat, or even restrictive, to contain the poem. Given that the poem is a fairly meandering journey through the speaker’s mind as she contemplates the meaning of the bee box, it makes sense that the meter isn’t too regular or insistent.
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Rhyme Scheme
“The Arrival of the Bee Box” is a free verse poem that doesn’t use rhyme for most of its 36 lines. Considering the poem follows the speaker's rather meandering internal thoughts regarding the bee box, the lack of rhyme scheme feels appropriate; steady, strict rhymes might make the poem feel too stiff, constructed, and predictable.
There is a bit of internal rhyme and strong assonance throughout, however, which adds to the poem's lyricism and musicality. These sounds draw attention to certain phrases—take “Square/chair,” which emphasizes the cumbersome shape of the box, in line 2. The poem also does introduce some rhyming towards the end:
They might ignore me immediately
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.The box is only temporary.
Apart from line 32 (the one that ends in “veil”), all of these lines chime together with a rhyming /ee/ sound. The reader, of course, has to wonder why this rhyme is introduced out of the blue. In a way, the rhyme does help build the poem towards its conclusion, quickening the pace and hurrying towards the last line. But it also works kind of ironically, the resolution of rhyming sounds highlighting the fact that the poem itself doesn’t really resolve.
Indeed, the poem merely ends on the speaker’s promise—which may or may not be kept—that she will set the bees free “tomorrow”, and her assertion that the box is “temporary.” The rhymes accumulate towards this last word, meaning that the poem’s final point as it were is to suggest the temporary nature of the speaker’s troubled mind. This temporariness, though, seems more linked to the certainty of death (which is mentioned in the first stanza) than some kind of actual relief.
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“The Arrival of the Bee Box” Speaker
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The speaker in this poem is first-person—and it is the speaker who receives the bee box mentioned in the title. Though it doesn’t say so explicitly, most people equate the speaker with Plath herself. Supporting this idea is the fact Plath and her husband Ted Hughes did indeed purchase a bee box (and they had a laburnum tree in the garden).
The speaker in the poem has conflicted feelings about the bee box. She is both fascinated and intimated by its imposing presence and the “dangerous” contents. Indeed, she projects different emotions onto the box, imagining the bees as angry and like a “mob.” At times, she seems to like the power that she holds over the bees, which is essentially a god-like power over life and death. In line 25, for example, she asserts her power to let the bees starve. Towards the end of the poem, however, the speaker starts to express a more empathetic point of view, promising to set the bees free. This is tempered by the fact that she won’t do it today, but only “tomorrow” (suggesting she can still change her mind).
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“The Arrival of the Bee Box” Setting
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The poem doesn’t really give much away about its setting. Generally speaking, the only things in the poem are the bee box and the speaker (and the bees of course—though these are never actually, explicitly mentioned in the poem itself!). There is no real sense of location or time. It’s fair to say, then, that the setting is essentially the speaker’s mind—which is a troubled mind in contemplation of the power it holds.
Within the speaker’s thoughts, though, the poem touches on different elements related to setting. In the first two stanzas, the speaker’s thoughts don’t travel far in terms of time and space. But in the third stanza she compares the bee box to a slave ship, casting her mind back a hundred years or more. In the following stanza, this thought travels even further historically, briefly settling in ancient Rome (during Caesar’s reign). These time-travels of the mind aren’t arbitrary—they help the poem investigate power and what it means to hold power in a more far-reaching way.
In the sixth stanza, the speaker conjures a more naturalistic, almost pastoral setting. She talks about laburnum and cherry trees. But this isn’t intended to paint a pretty scene—the laburnum is a poisonous plant, and so suggests the threat of danger and deadliness.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Arrival of the Bee Box”
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Literary Context
Sylvia Plath was one of the foremost poets of the 20th century. Her work is often characterized as "confessional," though this risks over-simplification. Other poets often categorized under this term are Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, and W.D. Snodgrass (John Berryman sometimes gets included too).
Essentially, the label speaks to the poet's willingness to write their own life into their work—to take the raw materials of life and make poetry. It's a pretty blunt term that doesn't do justice to the subtlety of Plath's work. While there are of course biographical elements to this poem—and those of the collection from which it's drawn, Ariel—the poem wouldn't endure if it didn't work without the reader knowing biographical information about the poet.
The most obvious starting point for this poem's context is the aforementioned Ariel. This collection published in 1965, two years after Plath committed suicide. Plath's original sequence for the book had five bee-related poems as its ending (Ted Hughes, her husband and fellow poet, changed the order when he edited the publication). The other bee poems are "The Bee Meeting," "Stings," "The Swarm," and "Wintering." The collection also includes some of Plath's most famous poems, including "Daddy," "Lady Lazarus," and "Tulips." Death lurks as a theme through much of the book, chiming tragically with real-life events.
Historical Context
It's worth noting that there are at least two specific elements to the poem drawn from real life. Plath did have an interest in bees and ordered a bee box to home that she shared with Ted Hughes in the U.K. Her father was an entomologist who studied bees as part of his work. Domesticated bee-keeping is a practice that stretches back well into the human story, probably to around 2500 BC in Egypt. Plath and Hughes also had a laburnum tree in their Devon home. This is a pretty but deadly tree with bright yellow flowers (it's old colloquial name is "golden chain tree." They are quite common in English gardens.
The poem also makes reference to other historical periods. The first of these is the slave trade. From approximately the 16th to the 19th century, the slave trade was the horrendous practice of enslavement that forcefully removed hundreds of thousands of Africans from their continent. It was highly profitable business mostly conducted by white Europeans, and was a triangulated trade (because it involved Africa, America, and Europe in three distinct stages).
The other historical reference is to ancient Rome, in particular the rule of Julius Caesar (100 BC to 44 BC). Caesar is one of history's most infamous leaders and was killed through assassination.
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More “The Arrival of the Bee Box” Resources
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External Resources
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Plath's Life and Poems — A valuable resource from the Poetry Foundation about Plath and her work.
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Plath and Hughes — An early radio interview with Plath and her poet husband Ted Hughes.
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On Beekeeping — An interesting look into the history of beekeeping.
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"The Ending Sylvia Plath Wanted" — An article on how Plath, before her death, had wanted her collection Ariel to close with her bee poems.
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A Reading of the Poem — An interesting visual take on "The Arrival of the Bee Box."
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Sylvia Plath
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