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Allusion

An allusion (uh-LOO-zhun) is a passing reference to a literary or historical person, place, or event, usually made without explicit identification. Allusion plays a significant role in “Lady Lazarus,” as evidenced by the title, which alludes to the biblical figure of Lazarus. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ raised Lazarus from the dead four days after his passing. This event ranks among the most revered miracles of Christ, who demonstrated his power over even death. However, Plath’s allusion to Lazarus is bitterly ironic. She refers to the poem’s speaker as “Lady Lazarus” because, like Lazarus, she comes back from the dead. The only difference is that she doesn’t wish to be revived. Thus, when the speaker calls herself “a sort of walking miracle” (line 4), her sarcasm feels palpable. Importantly, her sarcasm applies as much, if not more, to the doctor who has recently “resurrected” her. Whereas this doctor may fancy himself Christlike in his power, she figures him as a Nazi doctor who is a master of torture. Here Plath alludes to a common postwar belief that Nazis made lamps from Jewish victims’ skin (lines 4–9):

     A sort of walking miracle, my skin
     Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
     My right foot

     A paperweight,
     My face a featureless, fine
     Jew linen.

The speaker alludes to the Holocaust again later in the poem, controversially comparing her own suffering to that of the Jews.

Apostrophe

Apostrophe (uh-PAW-struh-FEE) is a rhetorical figure in which a speaker makes a direct and explicit address, usually to an absent person or to an object or abstract entity. The speaker of “Lady Lazarus” uses apostrophe to address individuals whom she feels pose a threat to her. The speaker invokes this sense of threat early in the poem (lines 19–12):

     Peel off the napkin
     O my enemy.
     Do I terrify?——

Here, the speaker envisions someone removing cloth wraps from her face, presumably after she has been miraculously resurrected from the dead, just like the biblical figure Lazarus. She directly addresses this person as “my enemy,” clearly indicating a relationship of antagonism. However, at this point in the poem it isn’t yet evident who this person is or why the speaker addresses them as her enemy. The nature of the relationship becomes clearer as we learn that the speaker has recently survived her third suicide attempt. When she “returned from the dead,” so to speak, she came face to face with the doctor who saved her life and is now charged with preserving it. This doctor is the speaker’s chief enemy, which the speaker affirms near the poem’s end: “So, so, Herr Doktor. / So, Herr Enemy” (lines 65–66).

Assonance and Consonance

The poem’s overall sonic effect derives in large part from Plath’s use of assonance and consonance. Assonance and consonance are sibling concepts, in that they both refer to the repetition of certain sounds in adjacent or nearby words. Assonance specifically refers to the repetition of vowel sounds, whereas consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds. Both sonic strategies appear constantly throughout the poem. But though Plath does sometimes use them in concert, she more often uses them in isolation. For example, consider the way she highlights I sounds in the following tercet (lines 19–21):

     And I a smiling woman.
     I am only thirty.
     And like the cat I have nine times to die.

Likewise, consider how Plath privileges M (in bold) and N (unitalicized) sounds in this tercet (lines 34–36):

     Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
     The first time it happened I was ten.
     It was an accident.

In addition to bringing a musical flair to the poem, Plath’s use of assonance and consonance lends the speaker’s language a poetic force that reflects her emotional intensity.

Metaphor

Metaphor plays a significant role in how the speaker of “Lady Lazarus” represents her experience. Throughout the poem, the speaker makes various comparisons between her and other kinds of sufferers. Most famously—or, perhaps, most infamously—the speaker compares herself to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. She describes her face as “a featureless, fine / Jew linen” (lines 8–9) that could be fashioned into “a Nazi lampshade” (line 5). Other metaphors are more complex and layered. For instance, the poem’s central conceit is that the speaker is a “lady” version of Lazarus, who was miraculously restored to life after having been dead and buried for days. Just as Lazarus’s story was recorded in the Bible, the speaker’s recovery must somehow be made public. The speaker imagines herself being wrapped in bandages, like Lazarus. As these bandages are slowly unwrapped to reveal her restored body, the speaker likens herself to a woman forced to perform an erotic “strip tease” (line 29). Then, once her body has been fully exposed, she compares herself to a martyred saint whose body becomes a holy relic, subjected to the gaze and touch of pious pilgrims. In each case, the speaker uses metaphor to describe her suffering.

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