Do you notice the tone shift in the poem? Where is that? What is the change from and to?

Question

Sylvia Plath: Poems

Do you notice the tone shift in the poem? Where is that? What is the change from and to?

Metaphors

I’m a riddle in nine syllables,

An elephant, a ponderous house,

A melon strolling on two tendrils.

O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!

This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.

Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.

I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.

I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,

Boarded the train there’s no getting off.

Sylvia Plath

Asked by QFSG F #1061713 on 10/28/2020 9:39 PM

Last updated by jill d #170087 on 10/28/2020 10:05 PM

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Answered by jill d #170087 on 10/28/2020 10:05 PM

The tone shift appears in the final lines, which seem to pull away from the rest of the poem and have a tone of darkness. “A bag of green apples” might make one sick, particularly because green apples tend to be sour. Plath also notes that the fruit is also unripe, a direct connection to the fact the narrator is unprepared for her soon to be role as a mother.

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Metaphors

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