Eve Gates
Voice ( is ) crying exclusion in my ear ’. Assigning a gender and a voice to what is essentially an intangible concept is a haunting and intriguing way to personify the weather , as it in due course attaches an uncomfortable persona to the wind . The prospect of the wind being able to ‘ speak ’ mimics the classic ‘ howling ’ associated with the sound of such weather , only the humanlike concept of a ‘ voice ’ is crucial in admitting a sense of fear and ghast to the wind . In addition , Plath eloquently adopts the use of phonaesthetics to depict a sorrowful , bleak tone ; this is fluently reinforced by the negative abstract nouns ‘ death ’ and ‘ dark ’ - the dentals at play here create a blunt poetic voice to summarise the dull atmosphere of the poem . Contrastingly , however , Plath has also incorporated the sibilance of ‘ beside a sunblue sea ’, which contrasts the negative tone . Instead , it creates a more calming , idyllic feel - this could potentially indicate the quick change of circumstances and feelings brought about by the ruthless passing of time . Furthermore , Plath utilises colour imagery in order to reflect the negative associations of time , more specifically the fear of time passing , emphasised by adjectives ‘ jade ’ and ‘ garnet ’. She suggests that ‘ we move in jade ’ and ‘ cease with garnet ’, which utilises collective noun ‘ we ’ to break the fourth wall and incorporate the audience into the poem , bringing about an aura of ‘ us ’ against ‘ them ’; them , in this context , being time . The dynamic verb ‘ move ’ juxtaposes the dynamic verb ‘ cease ’ after the conjunction of the compound sentence . This subsequently suggests that with the excitement of life and new experiences comes good and bad , represented by the colour red for passion and love , and green for envy and hatred . Plath builds on this idea with the final two lines , which , in terms of this structure , use the only set of rhyming couplets in the poem in order to fulfil the concept of these lines being the most definitive of the poem . She states , ‘ Time is a great machine of iron bars // That drains eventually the milk of the stars ’. Theoretically , this is dubbed a heroic couplet ,
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