The Power of Language: Comparative Analysis of Plath's "Words" and Atwood's "Spelling" Natasha Borden College

In the two poems, "Spelling" by Margaret Atwood and "Words" by Sylvia Plath, words are described in terms of power: the power to create, to penetrate, to move, and to destroy. Both poets invoke images of words as connected to time and forces of nature, as active outside of the speaker, and, as having a presence which continues to live, grow, and affect its environment. Both poems also employ violent and shocking images of death, destruction, and decay. Whereas Atwood's poem has a hopeful "rising from the ashes" tone to it, Plath's poem holds a more bleak and dark feeling in which the wound inflicted by the force of cutting words never fully heals but penetrates and lingers.

Atwood's poem "Spelling" links three timelines by using women of different ages and times and connects the feminine to the power of words and the violence of being silenced. The first timeline is set in the present moment between a mother and her daughter. The child is still very young and "plays on the floor". The image of childhood is further represented by the primary colors of "red, blue & hard yellow". This girl child is "learning how to spell". By connecting this very young female with the process of learning language and how to create words Atwood...