Sylvia Plath


scratch on the surface can result in the same line being played over and over. Plath is suggesting that this is what politicians do; repeat the same tired phrases or empty promises, but nothing changes.


The second stanza is really a criticism of our cynicism: ‘There’s no career in the venture/ Of riding against the lizard,/ Himself withered these latter-days/ To leaf-size from lack of action:/ History’s beaten the hazard.’ Plath jokes that  a wise career move, no one is prepared to do it. As well as actual dragons from folklore (for example, tales like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), Plath also means negative things in our society, such as corruption or greed, which people do not care enough about to confront.   into, you do it for honour, as Sir Gawain and the other Knights of the Round Table would have done. The fact that we do not even see  it as a tiny lizard, also shows that we are happy to largely ignore evil in our society, as long as it doesn’t inconvenience us. As in the title, Plath uses alliteration to draw attention to her point – ‘History’s beaten the hazard’. The sarcasm is very obvious here.


 we can justify anything by saying it is for ‘the children’: ‘the children are better for it’. We seem to have a safer society, but is it just one that appears to be safer? Have things really changed at all? Plath insinuates that greed is always a factor in political life: ‘The cow milks cream an inch thick.’ For example, an Irish person can buy nice clothes cheaply, but only if they can ignore the fact that these garments are often produced in sweat-shops in Asia where the vulnerable are exploited. The other interpretation of the third stanza  imagination to apathy.


LEAVING CERTIFICATE HIGHER LEVEL


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