A Brief Explication Of Balloon Poem By Sylvia Plath (Essay Sample)

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A LITERARY ANALYSIS OF “BALLOONS” POEM BY SYLVIA PLATH
Introduction
The poem, “Balloons” is written by Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath is classified as a confessional poet due to the kind of poetry that she wrote. Confessional poets are known to speak out their emotions through their poems. Her poem, “Balloons,” is classified under confessional poems as it is filled with emotions about her children. In this poem, Plath uses life-like features to describe the balloons as souls in a quiet home. In order to make the theme more understandable, Plath uses essential elements such as personification, imagery, and metaphor. Imagery is used from the beginning to the end of the poem to display the poem’s setting while the metaphor that is used creates comparisons of the balloons to symbols. With this, it is possible to deduce from the poem that the title “Balloons” is metaphorically used to represent souls. The poet also uses features such as division, genre and rhythm to make the poem more understandable. This paper will focus on the features; divisions, genre and rhythm and how they have been used to make the poem more understandable.
Divisions
The poem Balloons by Sylvia Plath is divided into 6 stanzas of 5 lines each. A poem that has stanzas where every stanza has 5 lines is called is a quintet. It is, therefore, correct to say that this poem is composed of 6 quintets. The importance of these uniform stanzas across the poem is that they help in the uniformity of the poem, perhaps, just like balloons are uniform. Plath uses an organized structure of unrhymed five-line stanzas commonly known as quintets as aforementioned. These lines do not have a predictable length but are irregular in length and the predominant color imagery that has been used provides unity. She uses animal imagery to describe the balloons linking them to the world of childhood. In another imagery, she alludes to the peacock’s feather which is colorful although its symbolism is complex. “The heart like wishes or free/ Peacocks blessing” (16,17). This kind of structure and imagery brings about unity of the poem.
Genre
This poem is classified under confessional poetry. As it is with confessional poets, Plath is involved in an inward expression of emotions about her children. It is a style that dominates Plath’s poems. In a well-crafted positive poem, Plath offers tribute to her two children. She uses the imagery of balloons to innocently capture the curiosity of the children. As the poem nears the end, the reader is able to deduce some changes which occur on the poem. The fifth stanza signals a change in the interpretation of the poem. It depicts a more sinister interpretation as the balloons could be interpreted to represent the fragility of happiness. It is possible to speculate that Plath had a premonition of the future. This can be interpreted from information outside the poem but that one will not be covered in this context. In this poem, Plath borrows a lot from her personal life. In the third stanza, red and green colors predominate. “Globes of thin air, red, green” (14). This creates an atmosphere of positive expectancy. This is revealed later in the poem through the way in which Plath’s mind is dominated by the thoughts about her children. She is seen to talk about things from an observational perspective. In fact, the observational tone used in the poem is used to real...