“Lady Lazarus” has a complex tone, in which the speaker obscures her evident anguish under layers of bitter irony. On a very basic level, the speaker is struggling to cope with a distressed mental state. It isn’t entirely clear what has caused her emotional instability, but this instability causes her great anguish and despair. Indeed, as she narrates over the course of the poem, she has attempted suicide on three separate occasions. The fact that none of these attempts has yet proven successful doesn’t just frustrate the speaker—it enrages her. It is precisely this rage that drives the bitter irony that characterizes much of the poem. Perhaps the easiest place in the poem to sense the speaker’s irony is the title: “Lady Lazarus.” In this phrase, the word “lady” ironically suggests that the speaker is a female version of a male archetype. Just as the biblical Book of Genesis describes Eve as having been created from one of Adam’s ribs, the speaker is a derivative, “lady” version of the great and saintly Lazarus. When the speaker claims this diminutive identity for herself, she does so with blistering irony.