Ariel

Quiz: "Ariel" by Sylvia Plath

1. Recall – Form & Composition: When and where did Plath write "Ariel," and what real-life activity directly inspired the poem?

1. Recall – Publication: "Ariel" was not published during Plath's lifetime. Who edited and published the collection posthumously, and in what year did it appear?

1. Recall – Key Image: What symbolic figure from English legend is referenced in the middle section of the poem to represent the shedding of identity and social roles?

1. Recall – Symbols: What does the poem's opening state of darkness and complete stillness ("stasis") represent, according to the analysis?

1. Comprehension – Turning Point: At what moment does the poem's emotional and narrative direction shift most significantly, and what does that shift signal about the speaker's agency?

1. Comprehension – Dual Meaning: The word "perfected" appears near the poem's close. Explain the two meanings the analysis identifies, and why their combination makes the ending so haunting.

1. Comprehension – Natural Imagery: In the later stanzas, the speaker dissolves into a series of natural, fleeting substances. What do these images collectively symbolize, and how do they reframe the idea of death?

1. Analysis – The Horse: How does the horse function as a symbol throughout the poem? In your answer, address both what it represents and how the speaker's relationship to it changes as the poem progresses.

1. Analysis – Tone: The analysis describes the tone as simultaneously exhilarating and unsettling. How do these two emotional registers coexist in the poem, and what does their tension reveal about the speaker's attitude toward self-destruction?

1. Analysis – Intertextuality: The title "Ariel" carries at least two significant literary and linguistic resonances beyond the horse's name. Identify both references and explain how each one enriches the poem's central concerns.

Answer Key

1. Plath wrote "Ariel" in October 1962 in Devon, England, during a prolific creative period following her separation from Ted Hughes. It was inspired by her real experience of riding a horse named Ariel at a nearby stable.

1. Ted Hughes edited and published the collection posthumously in 1965.

1. Lady Godiva — who famously rode naked through Coventry as a sacrificial act — is referenced to represent the speaker's public, deliberate shedding of identity, gender roles, and name.

1. The opening darkness and stasis represent the life the speaker is leaving behind: depression, confinement, and the heaviness of merely existing.

1. The turning point comes when the speaker loses control and is dragged forward by a force beyond her will (the horse, momentum, or fate). This signals that her agency has vanished and she is no longer acting but being acted upon.

1. "Perfected" means both completed and made perfect; in the poem's context, completion signifies death, so the line suggests that the speaker has reached a final, irreversible destination — perfect precisely because it is finished.

1. Images of dew, foam, and wheat symbolize the self dissolving into the elemental world. Rather than depicting death as harsh obliteration, they suggest a pantheistic merging with nature — becoming part of something alive and fundamental.

1. The horse symbolizes an uncontrollable natural force and the unconscious self — the part of the speaker that exceeds reason and social constraint. Early in the poem the speaker and horse begin to merge; by the end the boundary between rider and animal has dissolved entirely, reflecting the speaker's complete loss of individual identity.

1. The joy in the poem is real — there is genuine exhilaration in the speed and the shedding of old constraints — but that joy is inseparable from self-destruction. This tension reveals that the speaker experiences liberation and annihilation as the same act, making the poem both thrilling and profoundly disturbing.

1. "Ariel" echoes Shakespeare's airy, free spirit in The Tempest (suggesting liberation and otherworldliness) and the Hebrew phrase meaning "lion of God" (suggesting sacred, untamed power). Together, these references deepen the poem's themes of freedom, divine force, and sacrifice.