The Resurrected Soul: A Study of Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus”, “A Better Resurrection” and “Fever 103”

Sylvia Plath is one of the most important twentieth-century poets. Her poetry is considered one of the most productive and it is highly interpretive due to its variant nature. One can find in her poems multiple themes and images which in fact reflect the intensity of her poetic creativity. One of the most recurrent images in her poetry is the image of rebirth. Her continuous reference to death and rebirth mirrors her wish to die and rise again in a better way. This notion turned into an obsession that led, in a way, to a series of suicidal acts, ending her life. Therefore, she wishes to have a better life-afterdeath so that she will alleviate her burdened psyche. Her works, as a result, reflect her obsession with this image. In most of her poems, she makes use of archetypal myths, names and images of rebirth, like, for instance, her regular reference to the myth of the phoenix and other myths and legends which imply rebirth. Thereupon, the aim of this paper is to examine Plath’s use of the image of rebirth in three of her poems: “A Better Resurrection”, “Lady Lazarus” and “Fever 103”.