Married to Shadow

In “The Colossus,” by Sylvia Plath, the author takes the reader to grim world where a powerless speaker lives in the shade of a monumental figure. The sharp contrast between the poem’s two characters is explored through Plath’s meticulous control of language that spawns intense imagery, overloading the reader’s senses, which are now at Plath’s disposal. The themes of hopelessness and being overshadowed by an arcane ruler are easily uncovered in the author’s subtle sarcasm and subordinate tone.

“The Colossus” quickly begins with a hint of despair. The speaker, a person working on a distant figure’s monument, tells the reader that the figure she is working on will never reach completion in her lifetime. It is also learned that the speaker has contempt for the figure as it is noted that his words are “worse than a barnyard.” In the next stanza the figure’s “great lips” are said to be a “mouthpiece of the dead,” regurgitating the prophecies of gods. His self- proclaimed sate of high importance does little, however, to impress the speaker who labors under his reign.

Without any desire to do so, the speaker languidly works to fix the giant colossus. She scales “little ladders with gluepots and pails of Lysol.” Her presence relative to that of the monument is miniscule even though the same sky carpets them both. The clumsy reign of the figure, though already over, can still be felt in the land as his “fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered in their old anarchy to the horizon –line" and the damage he created is worse than lightning striking the ground.

It is in this chaotic landscape, full of uncertainty, that the speaker ponders her destiny, "counting the red stars and those of plum-color.” She comes to the realization that the figures shadow is too large for her to escape and loses hope, not caring much more for her future.

Sylvia Plath makes use of many literary devices to create the dim world the speaker lives in. In the very first stanza she introduces the two characters of the poem, the speaker, who we learn is trying to complete a monument of the second character, the figure. Sylvia’s speaker always refers to herself in the first person, making the connection between the reader and the speaker more personal. Furthermore the speaker always refers to the figure in the second person, a technique the author uses to increase the gap between the speaker and the figure, making their relationship distant and cold.

Plath’s language, from the start, hooks the reader into the segregated environment that shapes the rest of the poem. The speaker realizes that she "shall never get you put together entirely. Her use of the words "Pieced, glued, and properly jointed," serve to show the reader the immensity of the task that is forced upon the speaker. The colossus is large and thus has many parts that need to fit together nicely, a job too large in scale for the speaker.

Not only does Plath attach an impossible job to her speaker, she makes the speaker irritated as she strives to complete it. With detailed imagery aimed at priming frustration, the speaker is constantly surrounded by the figure’s “Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles.” She compares the figure’s aura to the auditory chaos of a barnyard bringing an atmosphere of discomfort the already daunting workplace. Mentioning the figure’s disjointed voice also characterizes him as disorganized and senseless.

... to be contined ...