EXPLORING The Times Are Tidy


This poem is from Plath’s poetry collection The Colossus, published in 1960. After they were married in 1956, Plath and Hughes moved back to the USA for two years. Plath wrote this  more critical light.


There are several ways to interpret this poem. In the 1950s, the USA and its allies were engaged in a ‘Cold War’ with Russia and other Eastern Bloc or communist countries. It was called the Cold War because the two sides were not engaged in armed confrontation with each other, but there was always a threat of escalation. During that time in the USA, the accusation of being a communist, or even a communist sympathiser, was enough to get a person sent to prison for life. This was called ‘McCarthyism’, after the Republican senator Joseph McCarthy, and is the practice of making accusations of subversion (plotting against one’s government) or treason (betraying one’s country) without Good Night, and Good Luck is worth watching  USA’s political history. Those who criticised these ‘witch-hunts’ often did so in oblique ways, to avoid being accused themselves. For example, Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible was written in 1953. On the surface it seems to be about the notorious Salem witch trials that took place in the 1690s. However, it is also an allegory, using the witch-hunts of the past to criticise political life in the 1950s. Similarly, ‘The Times Are Tidy’ can be interpreted as a criticism of McCarthyism. Another way to interpret this poem is to see it as condemning the complacency of the modern age and lamenting the fact that we have lost much of the magic and adventure of the past.


Senator Joseph McCarthy


 (or whistle-blowers) are unwelcome, because they might expose political corruption: ‘Unlucky the hero born/ In this province of the stuck record’. When a vinyl record is playing, a


386 VERSE 2025


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