Commentary on Sylvia Plath's "The Colossus"

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I shall never get you put together entirely, Pieced, glued, and properly jointed. Mule-bray, pig-grunt, and bawdy cackles Proceed from your great lips It’s worse than a barnyard Commentary on “The Colossus” In the poem “The Colossus”, Sylvia Plath assesses the grieving process that comes with failing to attain desired communication. There are many clues within the selected stanza that support this claim. The first line of the stanza articulates the speaker’s acknowledgement that her mission will end up in failure. By saying that she will “never get you put together entirely” (1), the speaker immediately implies her hopelessness of completing her goal by saying “never”. The first line also tells us that her task is related to a specific person because she directly uses the poem to speak to someone by addressing them as “you”. The next line contains descriptive words, “Pierced, glued, and properly jointed.” (2), to create imagery for the idea of connection. We now can see that the speaker’s immense, or colossal task if you will, it to make sense and feel some kind of communication with the person that the speaker has a broken connection to. In the third line the nature imagery from “Mule-bray, pig grunt, and bawdy cackles” (3), which are chaotic, non-understandable animal noises, are used to compare the attempted and failed connection like that of speaking to farm animals. The speaker’s difficulty with communicating with this specific person is shown by saying the misunderstood animal sounds “Proceed from your great lips” (4), with the speaker getting nothing but nonsense back and the inability to respond effectively. The words “great lips” are connotative of communication because lips are often thought to be a main facilitator of clear verbal communication. The speaker’s difficulty with getting a connection is present because the other persons “lips”
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