Ariel |work| | Sylvia Plath Poem

Suddenly, movement begins. The second stanza introduces the horse and the immediate physical sensation of the ride:

Plath repeatedly uses animal and elemental imagery: lioness, horse, arrow, dew, wheat, sea. The poem suggests that the truest self is not the thinking, suffering “I” but the raw, pre-verbal force of nature. To become “at one with the drive” is to escape the prison of self-consciousness. sylvia plath poem ariel