The Moon and the Yew Tree Essay Questions

What do the moon and the yew tree each symbolize?

The moon and yew tree are traditional symbols in addition to operating as motifs within the context of the poem. Traditionally, in various literary and mythological traditions (e.g., Greco-Roman mythology, Romantic poetry) the moon may represent femininity, maternity, and emotional and artistic sensitivity. In this poem, the moon parodies these symbolic meanings as both the speaker’s sinister and unsympathetic “mother” (Line 17) and a “bald and wild” (Line 27) antithesis to the traditionally aestheticized, hospitable, and passive figure of the ideal woman and mother. The yew tree, in pagan and Christian iconography, symbolizes death and rebirth and/or resurrection. In the poem, it signifies “blackness and silence” (Line 28), as well as unrequited passion (as it “points up” to the moon in Line 15), in addition to its traditional association with church graveyards.

Autobiographical and psychoanalytical readings of the poem might go a step further by suggesting that the phallic yew tree represents Plath’s father Otto Plath, and the vaginal moon represents Plath’s mother Aurelia Plath. The silence of the tree evokes Otto Plath’s early death and absence from the poet’s childhood, while the word “Gothic” may also evoke his Germanic ethnicity. The moon, which does not interact with the tree, and fails to become a “door” connecting the family, may occupy a position similar to that of Aurelia Plath. Autobiographical parallels aside, the moon and the yew tree work together (or rather, fail to work together) to triangulate the speaker’s relationship to notions of parental affection, security, and acceptance.

How does Plath use rhyme and meter?

Plath both evokes and evades traditional prosodic structures such as rhyme and pentameter. Although the majority of lines in this poem, including Line 1 (“This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary”) or Line 27 (“The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild”) contain around five stresses, suggesting pentameter, there are radical exceptions to this pattern such as Line 3 (“The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God”) and Line 28 (“And the message of the yew tree is blackness—blackness and silence”). Rhymes also appear sporadically and irregularly, but they do appear. In Stanza 2, for example, “upset” (Line 9) forms a rhyming couplet with “quiet” (Line 10), and even forms consonance with “right” (Line 8). While utilizing other exact and slant rhymes and consonances, the poem never revisits the scheme of Lines 8–10.

By approximating but never adhering to these traditional structures of form, and writing free verse that is not completely free, Plath offers her poem in a liminal kind of musicality that amplifies the theme of displacement. Just as the poem ambiguously lies between structural formality and anarchy, its speaker oscillates between belonging and abandonment, between faith and disillusionment, and between two unwelcoming parental figures.

How does the poem use religious allusions?

Plath both borrows from and subverts Christian images and narratives. The Virgin Mary (Line 17) is used as a proverbial maternal figure and the antithesis to the unmotherly moon. Mary’s effigy is “gentled by candles” (Line 20), but the moonlight is harsh, “[w]hite as a knuckle and terribly upset” (Line 9). Mary is traditionally associated with her “blue garments,” which symbolize her purity and royalty, while those of the moon (as a metaphor for the night sky), “unloose small bats and owls” that evoke winged representations of Satan (Line 18).

Other personified objects in the poem similarly allude to the church and its practices, while also critiquing its pitfalls. The “grasses unload their griefs on [the speaker’s] feet as if [she] were God” (Line 3) and “murmur[] of their humility” (Line 4), in a way that is perhaps exaggerated and mindless. Similarly, the church bells simply “affirm[] the Resurrection” (Line 13) rather than pondering its meaning, and the images of the saints are “stiff with holiness” (Line 26) rather than lively with it. Plath contemplates the performativity of institutionalized religion, which might closely resemble the performativity of some parent-child relationships.