Ariel — Sylvia Plath — IB English Literature (2015)
Sylvia Plath’s ‘Ariel’, is an ambiguous but equally powerful poem that expresses the poet’s desire to be liberated. The first half of the poem can be seen as exact reporting of what it is like to ride a horse, whereas the second half partakes in a mystery whereby the rider experiences something of a unity between horse and rider. On an autobiographical level, Ariel — as we know from reports about Plath’s life — was the name of her favourite horse, on whom she weekly went riding and by the end of the poem the speaker willingly accepts this ride into nothingness which can also be perceived as Plath’s own desire to commit suicide.
The poem comprises a number of beautiful images of the poet riding her beloved Ariel along this plain. In line 4, the poet describes the horse as being “God’s lioness”, portraying it as divine, impressive and enthralling. In line 6, she remarks upon the “furrow” or deep trenches the horse leaves behind demonstrating the sheer magnitude of the horse as it welcomes and envelopes the ground upon which it treads. In line 10, she describes the berries that can be found in this landscape as “Nigger-eye” in colour, emphasising the ripeness of the fruits thus evoking an appetite in the reader. In line 16, the poet describes how the horse “Hauls [her] through the air”, and the use of the material verb “haul” emphasises the vigorous movement of the horse and the thrill of the experience. Both the speaker and horse share an unfailing bond, as evidenced in line 5 where she exclaims: “How one we grow”, demonstrating just how much the two are inextricably linked.
Throughout the poem, there are various references to female power and the poet’s own sense of empowerment. In line 19, she alludes to Godiva, who is the legendary figure who rode on a horse naked in rebellion to her husband’s raising of taxes. Both she and the speaker have two things in common. The first is that they are both horse riders, but more importantly they both take an action that is frowned upon by society, which is emphasised in the following line where the speaker says: “I unpeel dead hands, dead stringencies”. The concreteness of “hands” gives way to the abstractness of “stringencies”, which represent the confinements of which she’s been victim. Both the physical and psychological aspects of the self have died and are pared away, which is reinforced by the use of the material verb “unpeel” as it illustrates the ferocity in which this act of self-liberation takes place.
Colour is a perennial motif that the poet employs to a large degree. In the second line of the first stanza, the poet opens the poem by describing the sky as a “substanceless blue” which “Pour of tor and distances”. This opening ensconces the reader into a profoundly idyllic and epic setting in which the speaker rides her equally impressive horse. Powerful visual imagery can be seen in lines 11–13 where she describes the juice of the “Nigger-eye berries” as “Black sweet blood mouthfuls”. The sensuousness prescribed to the taste of the fruits portray them as being temptingly delicious. The fact that the speaker consigns them to category of “Shadows”, that is, things which threaten the vision and power of her creative surge, and describes them as being “hooks”, suggest that indulging in them would impede her from completing this journey.
Pace is built through rhyme and the poem’s structure. Up to the seventh stanza of the poem, the rhyme scheme has been mostly regular in terms of half-rhymes. Each stanza has two lines which rhyme: “darkness” / “distance,” “grow” / “furrow,” “arc” / “catch,” “dark”. However, as the poem becomes increasingly intense, there is break from this regular terza rima pattern. In line 18 before it becomes clear that the speaker has embarked upon a journey of self-destruction, “heels” is made to rhyme with “unpeel” in the supplementary stanza and “seas” of the following stanza is made to rhyme with “stringencies”. The unity of the poem as a whole has thus been maintained while the shift in its theme is signaled both thematically and structurally by a shift in the rhyme scheme. “Pour of tor and distances,” “Pivot of heels and knees,” of the first and second stanzas, and “Of the neck I cannot catch.” of the third stanza have an internal rhyme (“pour” / “tor”) or the alliteration (“cannot catch”) or the assonance (“heels and knees”), which creates a kind of music which takes the place of exact or even half-rhyme. The fact that the stanzas are tri-fold parallels the tri-fold allusions to the horse’s movement. The stanzaic structure and the structure of the individual stanzas corroborates the theme of the poem.
