"Wanting To Die" By Anne Sexton

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“Wanting to Die” by Anne Sexton “Wanting to Die” is one of Anne Sexton’s third collection of poems in her Pulitzer Prize book titled “Live or Die.” The ‘theme’, which seems to stand out the most in this poem, is the choice that Sexton must make between life and death. Consequently she insists to die because of her painful life and hopeless state of mind. Sexton famously said, "Poetry led me by the hand out of madness." She also argued against this perception in her interviews. In an interview with Patricia Marx, Sexton denies that writing "cured her": "I don’t think [that writing cured my mental illness] particularly. It certainly did not create mental health. It isn’t as simple as my poetry makes it because I simplified everything to make it more dramatic. I have written poems in a mental institution, but only later, not at the beginning." Sexton is a confessional poet with remarkable writing techniques, which intrigues me. Some of her writing techniques are the use of language, imagery, tone, and form. Sexton uses heartfelt expressions and words to attest her idea about suicide. In the first stanza, she chooses the word ‘lust’ to show the reader how suicide is important and instinctive. Then she justifies her idea by saying “suicide have a special language.” Suicide has other characteristics “like a carpenter, his craft, his magic, thoughtful, warmer” which Sexton wants the reader to know how skillful suicide is at work. She seems to introduce suicide in a good appearance to pursue the reader to want to commit suicide. The use of images also helps her language to present death as she sees death. Sexton images are very expressive as she uses metaphors, personifications, and a simile. The first metaphor she uses compares her clothes to a tunnel, “ I walk in my clothes, unmarked by that voyage.” Another metaphor she uses is ‘the enemy’, which is

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