Sylvia Plath - Cut

for Susan O'Neill Roe

What a thrill ----
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it, 
Clutching my
bottle Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they one?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill

The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man ----

The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump ----
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.

“Cut” by Sylvia Plath

The poem “Cut” is about Sylvia Plath accidentally cutting the top of her thumb off while cutting onions. In this poem Plath goes on to describe in depth the damage she’s done using a large variety of similes and metaphors. It soon becomes obvious to the reader that Plath is slightly crazy. Throughout the poem Plath’s attitude changes from very excited to self hate.

Plath uses quite a few techniques in her poem. The two main techniques are similes and metaphors. She uses similes a lot throughout the course of the poem. One of the similes Plath uses is, “A flap like a hat,” this creates a picture of her thumb hanging on by a thread. One of the metaphors Plath uses in “Cut” is, “Out of the gap a million soldiers run, redcoats every one.” This creates an image of the thumb bleeding profusely. Another metaphor that Plath uses is, “Little pilgrim, the Indians axed your scalp.” This creates an image of the top of her thumb being cut off as if by an American Indian. Together, all of the similes and metaphors are very effective in creating a vivid image of the damage done to her thumb.

The tone changes hugely throughout this poem. At the beginning of the poem when Plath cut her thumb she is thrilled, this shown by the type of words she uses. For example Plath wrote, “What a thrill----my thumb instead of an onion.” and, “Clutching my bottle of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.” But as the poem progresses Plath seems to realise what she’s done to herself and the tone changes into self hate. This is shown clearly by the lines, “Saboteur, kamikaze man----” and also, “How you jump----trepanned veteran, dirty  girl, thumb stump.”

In my opinion this is a very well written poem but it doesn’t overly appeal to me. I didn’t like it that much because it is too crazy. Another reason I didn’t like it that much was because even though I think the use of metaphors and similes was very clever, I think they were used so frequently that you didn’t appreciate the cleverness of them. Overall I think the poem “Cut” was cleverly crafted, although I would not choose to read it for pleasure.

By Aidan