Summary
The poem opens with a speaker interrogating an unidentified listener. The speaker first asks a broad opening question—"are you our sort of person?"—before moving on to ask a number of peculiar and invasive questions about the listener's body. For instance, the speaker inquires, does the applicant have a glass eye or a crutch? Does he have breasts or a crotch made of rubber? Collectively, the speaker wants to know, is the listener missing any body parts? They inform the listener that, unless he is missing something, it won't make sense for the speaker (and whatever body or organization the speaker represents) to give him anything. They briskly tell the listener to stop crying and ask him to show his hand. After confirming that the hand is empty, the speaker offers the listener a new hand to fill the empty one.
Analysis
Anybody who has interviewed for a job or position will recognize that, in this poem, Sylvia Plath is riffing off of that familiar format. This is a very strange interview, full of surreal and very personal questions, but it's nonetheless recognizable: the speaker is interrogating a listener to see if he is in need of, or worthy of, something only the speaker can provide. The opening line, "First, are you our sort of person?" makes clear that the speaker represents not an individual but a kind of corporate body or a large, powerful, bureaucratic entity. Perceptive readers, at this point, likely won't know what this poem is a metaphor for. But they'll probably pick up on the idea that the interview is an extended metaphor for something. The recognizable question-answer pattern of a job interview, not to mention the power dynamics inherent in the ritual, makes it a useful figurative shorthand for more complex and unspoken social negotiations.
An ironic twist occurs at the start of the second stanza, letting us know that we might need to put some serious mental work into understanding this metaphor. A typical job interview isn't focused on whether the applicant needs work, but rather on whether the employer needs and wants the applicant. Yet this interview, oddly, seems to focus more on the applicant's own level of need. The questions studding the first stanzas initially seem to suggest that the interviewer will look at things like a glass eye or a rubber crotch as reasons not to accept this applicant. The interviewer asks whether the applicant has "Stitches to show something's missing," hinting that, for this particular company or entity, something "missing" will present a problem. But the next line reveals that, in fact, this interviewer wants the applicant to be missing something. Whatever it is that they're going to give this applicant, it's apparently supposed to help compensate for the things he's missing. However, just because the interviewer is here to help fulfill the applicant's needs doesn't mean they're especially kind or concerned. Instead, Plath exaggerates the archetype of the rushed businessman with a brusque, impersonal tone. Even before we know what the applicant will receive, we start to suspect that this isn't such a good deal for him, and that this process will be a distressing one.
That brusque tone is made especially vivid through Plath's use of an abrupt and unpredictable pattern of line breaks and sentence structures. The poem is written in free verse, meaning that it doesn't have a consistent pattern of syllables or emphasis. But it doesn't feel free—its unpredictability makes it feel constricting and scary. It creates a feeling of being out of control, for the reader and, presumably, the applicant. Let's examine the first two lines of the second stanza just to get an idea of how this works. It begins with a question, "Stitches to show something's missing?" This is a fragment rather than a full sentence, making it feel abrupt and impatient. Next, it's evident that the applicant never gets a chance to answer: he's essentially made voiceless. The interviewer answers for him, saying "No, no?" The repetition of "No" also creates the sense that the interviewer is impatient and aggressive. These two fragmented sentences are crammed into a line, creating a feeling that the applicant faces a ceaseless barrage of questions. But the next sentence, "Then / How can we give you a thing?" is split over two lines—simultaneously making the first line feel crammed and nonstop, and cutting it off with suspenseful, uneasy enjambment. In contrast, the second line, consisting of just one partial sentence, feels short and bereft after the cramped first one. Thus Plath cultivates a feeling of claustrophobia, uncertainty, and suffocating pressure.
