Wrestling With Giants: Sylvia Plath and Memory

Remaining in the vein of my current literary musings, I decided to post here the majority of a short paper I wrote for my poetry course last year. The paper is about the poem, "The Colossus," written by Sylvia Plath, a relatively well-known poet who lived in the middle of the twentieth century. Since this is a paper rather than an article written specifically for this journal, it is a bit longer than my other works here, but it will hopefully still be of interest to most of you. I have removed the pagination references from this work since they came from a book most people are not likely to have; if you wish to reference the original poem, you're more than welcome to follow the link I've provided here. Of course, reading the original work first will more than likely help you understand the context of this paper.

I like this poem in particular because I think that in spite of a plethora of what seem to be aspects of "personal mythology" (meaning references that are probably only significant to Plath herself), she manages to encapsulate in this work the struggle that many people endure as they try to retain a hold on the memory of someone who was lost to them, whether through death or simply separation, especially when the loss took place a number of years in the past. In this case, the person lost and referenced is most likely her father, who died when Plath was eight years old, as he is the central subject of much of her poetry. The work also shows very eloquently the inner workings of a depressive mind, where events may perhaps be blown significantly out of proportion due to various psychological issues that continually hack at the writer's psyche.

The introspective and highly personal nature of Sylvia Plath’s work results in a body of images that can sometimes be very hard to interpret and understand. However, she often manages to utilize symbolic image and dualistic language to speak to personal issues that nearly everyone can understand and relate to from their own personal experience. Plath’s poem, “The Colossus,” appears to adhere to the confessional theme of the rest of her body of work, in spite of the fact that it may initially seem to simply carry the storyline of an event.

On the surface, the story of “Colossus” is the story of a person charged with the task of tending the Colossus, a Greek sculpture said to be of staggering size that once straddled the shores of a Greek harbor and was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The character in this poem takes note of the fact that their task may be an exercise in futility, but continues to care for the megalith, even taking shelter in its ear to rest rather than descending from its height. Because of the size of the task, the character in the poem has no respite from her work. The job of caring for this statue has consumed her life, but she cannot escape, as she obviously feels that it needs her attention.

Interestingly, like the Colossus, Plath’s father is no longer around to be evidence to her memory. Therefore, it is very likely that both the Colossus and her father have become somehow “larger” in the retelling of their tales and the maintenance of their memories. Considering Plath’s consistent focus upon her father throughout her work (and her reference of “O father” in line 18) it is likely fair to assume that this poem’s secondary, deeper subject is her father and, more specifically, her maintenance of her memories regarding him. Since her work is often confessional in nature, it is also plausible to interpret Plath as the central character, speaking in metaphor regarding her memory.

This poem is replete with the echoes of loneliness. The character in this work is alone in her task of caring for the Colossus, indicating that it is possible Plath feels alone in her responsibility of caring for her father’s memory. This loneliness covers the poem like a shroud, particularly late in the work when she admits, "My hours are married to shadow." This offers the poem an even deeper ring of tragedy, as the character is completely alone with an edifice she knows is only an idealized reconstruction of the true person.

The poem starts with an admission of the somewhat futile nature of her task as Plath admits, I shall not get you put together entirely, /Pieced, glued, and properly jointed." She realizes that the task of understanding her father and sorting out her memories of him is so monumental that it is not a task that will likely ever be complete. However, it is important to note that although she realizes this, she does feel that the task of sorting him out and acting as a caretaker to his memory is important enough to demand her attention.

The character wonders what the real person idealized by the statue thought of himself as she works, musing that, "Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle, /Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other." She longs for some echo of his voice so she can know the true person, as indicated when the character notes, "Thirty years now I have labored /To dredge the silt from your throat. /I am none the wiser." She has no way of allowing her father to speak, so she can not gain insight about his perspective regarding who he was or how he would like to be remembered. In fact, as noted in an earlier strophe, what little she receives from the megalith is nonsensical and disjointed. "Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles /Proceed from your great lips. /It’s worse than a barnyard."

Since her father is only held alive in her memory, and since this has been the case for a number of years at this point, he has become like the ancient Greek Colossus. His image has grown beyond the man he was into a monument much larger and more idealistic than the man himself could have ever been. His image has grown so immense, in fact, that his features are beyond recognition and meaning. Plath refers to his tongue, for example, as a pillar, his eyebrows as weedy acres, and his ears as cornucopias. Later in the poem, she also notes, "You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum." This reference further accentuates the idea that she feels very separate from her father as an actual person. He is a piece of her history that feels distant and disconnected from her own personal experience, because he disappeared from her life’s story so long ago.

Consequently, Plath reflects through this work also feels belittled as caretaker of her father’s memory. She depicts herself as an "ant in mourning" as she scales the massive sculpture to care for it. Since, in death, he has become so much larger, she has no way to compete with the enormity of his memory as a still-living person with flaws and problems that are still very evident within her memory and to those around her.

It is tragic to note that in spite of her efforts, it is likely that Plath feels that the remnants of her memory that remain are a massive ruin. The character in the poem notes the power necessary to create such massive destruction when she says, "It would take more than a lightning-stroke /To create such a ruin." In spite of the fact that, as was mentioned previously, she has labored for thirty years to maintain and retain the integrity of the Colossus, there are greater forces that have repeatedly or regularly come into play and resulted in its deterioration.

The end of this work carries the weight of dejected acquiescence as the character resignedly admits, "No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel/On the blank stones of the landing." The character realizes that she is alone in her maintenance of the Colossus, and that not only is she no longer anticipating any help from outside in her immense task of maintaining this monolith, but she is likely also no longer holding out the hollow hope that she will receive any answers about the Colossus, either. She is eternally wedded to the task of taking care of the Colossus by herself, and she believes she will receive no aid or respite until she is a Colossus in the mind of another.

Copyright 2005 S.L. Olson