Ariel

By Sylvia Plath
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
"Ariel" begins on a quiet, somber, note. We don't have many details about our speaker or setting. Instead, we jump right into what
our speaker is feeling and sensing.
In this stanza, picture her chilling in the pre-dawn morning, where there's "stasis in darkness." "Stasis" suggests motionlessness
in the night (blue) where there continuously appear (pour) high rocks and hills (tor), symbolizing obstacles and journies
encountered. Recall that this is in night, the opposite of "morning."
Our speaker herself is caught off guard, and, instead of explaining exactly what's happened, she shares with us just the vague
images she sees flying by in the "substanceless," or thin, blue morning air.
The rhyme of "pour" and "tor," and all of the consonance of the S sounds make these lines overflow with repetitive sounds.
The poem is written in three-line stanzas, known as tercets. The lines are short, choppy, and sonically dense. We've already got
tons of rhyme, assonance, and consonance, and we've only talked about the first three lines of the poem.
Gods lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!The furrow
Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,
Then, in the following lines, we are able to put together Ariel's appearance in a piecemeal way. We see the "pivot"the
movementof the horse's "heels and knees." We see "the brown arc / Of the neck," which is "sister," or somehow alike to, the
"furrow" or trail in the ground below. We've got a slightly clearer picture of Ariel now.
Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else
Hauls me through air
Images continue to flash by our speaker's eyes as she's on her wide ride. She sees "Nigger-eye / Berries" that "cast dark / Hooks."
The shift takes the reader from real life experience to symbolic and spiritual experience. She even imagines that she can taste
these sweet berries in "Black sweet blood mouthfuls. The heavy alliteration of "black" and "blood" make us feel like we can
taste those berries rolling around in our mouths.
"Hooks" and "air": in these
dashes we feel the quickness of Ariel's movement. Only these long dashes (and not words) can keep pace with the galloping
horse.
The irony is that Plath represents the material experience as shadows, unreal, compared to the spiritual (Something else) that
compels her (hauls me)
Something else

Hauls me through air

Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.
White
Godiva, I unpeel
Dead hands, dead stringencies.
In these lines, the speaker turns her attention away from her surroundings and back to her horse Ariel. But again, instead of a
clear narrative or description, we get only flashes of imagesAriel's "thighs, hair" which "haul" our speaker "through air."
The speaker also describes herself as being "white"or fair, good, and pure, like Godiva. Her whiteness contrasts with the earlier
image of the "Nigger-eye / Berries." They, with their "blood mouthfuls," seem to represent death, or at least set up a visual, stark
contrast with this whiteness.
The speaker compares herself to Lady Godiva.
The Lady Godiva allusion sets up the image of a woman who protests materialism (taxes against Coventry), sacrificing her selfdignity and honor to ride unclothed, bare, exposed through the populace. This is a metaphor symbolized by "dead hands," the
symbol of collecting taxes, and "dead stringencies," the symbol of rigorous requirements pertaining to money: materialism.
And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child's cry
Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,
The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning.
With "And I" Plath describes her transcendence following this self-sacrifice. She is metaphorically an arrow, meaning she moves
with the speed of an arrow; she is also metaphorically the dew of sea spray that speeds from the ocean after her plunge of selfsacrifice (suicidal). She has come to be at one with the drive into enlightened intellectual and aesthetic judgments (eye) that
proceed from (cauldron: brew) a new beginning (morning). In this case, the speaker's letting go of her actual body, and imagining
herself as becoming one with naturewith the sea, and also, with Ariel. With this, she moves from night (ignorance) to day
(enlightenment).
The speaker has shed her human skin (metaphorically), and she's become one with her powerful, galloping horse.
She's an arrow heading towards the bullseye of the sun. She "flies," "at one with the drive"and she's now all instinct, all power.
In the end, the poem's about learning to let go, and finding power in that kind of release. "Ariel" simultaneously makes us crave,
and fear, a wild ride on a horse like Ariel.