By Evie Simons
An indisputable icon of feminist literature worshipped by A-Level English Lit students, Plath’s most well-known works— her posthumous poetry collection Ariel and her sole novel The Bell Jar (with its upcoming film adaptation, controversially starring Billie Eilish as protagonist Esther, having been recently announced)— often leave her other writing somewhat overlooked.
I, like many others in my class, chose Plath as one of the authors to write my NEA on in year 13. In a bid to stand out to examiners, I went down a slightly different path and chose to look at her collection The Colossus, the only volume of Plath’s poetry published before her death. In doing so, I had my introduction to this greatly underrated collection, which, named metaphorically after her late father, delves into complex themes of death, grief, and how this connects mankind with the natural world.
Plath’s focus on nature throughout The Colossus is what stood out to me the most in comparison with her other works. Having been written in the 50s and published in 1960, her eco-critical perspective seems rather prophetic and more relevant nowadays than ever.
We can see this throughout the collection as Plath brings nature, or the resounding absence of it, to the forefront of her poems. She creates an anti-pastoral tone that we rarely see in literature, which seems to serve as a warning for readers as she demonstrates the repercussions that humanity, severing our intrinsic connection with nature, will have for society. We perhaps see this most clearly in her poem ‘Suicide Off Egg Rock’, in which an unnamed man sees his only option as suicide in a desperate plea to escape the torments of urban life. The poem begins with a strikingly unglamorous description of ‘hotdogs [which] split and drizzl[ed]/ On the public grills’, and ‘Gas tanks, factory stacks’, which likely explains the man’s suicidal state when we learn that he has become irrevocably connected with this environment (his‘bowels’ are described as part of the ‘landscape/ Of imperfections’). The poem tragically ends with the figure drowning himself in a final effort to find peace in nature, however even this is futile as he becomes part of ‘the sea’s garbage,/ A machine to breathe and beat forever.’
Plath highlights the interconnectedness of man and the environment and the importance of not destroying this bond— a theme that seems extremely pertinent in the current climate crisis and age of AI.
This nihilistic yet necessary criticism of mankind’s growing identification with industrialisation and the urban world is also shown in the poem ‘Night Shift.’ This dystopian poem centres on factory workers and how their lives have become completely devoid of emotion and pleasantries as they have become enslaved as almost literal ‘cogs in a machine.’ Plath seems to continue her warning to us readers, demonstrating how destroying the natural world can have a detrimental effect on the human psyche.
Although there are undoubtedly poems in The Colossus, such as ‘Manor Garden’ and ‘Watercolour of Grantchester Meadows’, in which nature and its beauty are depicted in a positive light, it is likely that Plath includes them to make its loss and consequences even more poignant. She urges readers to analyse their relationship with the environment and shows the significance of it by constantly using metaphors of nature to explore human experiences. We see this in the titular poem ‘The Colossus’, as Plath likens her late father to the fallen Colossus of Rhodes: ‘I crawl like an ant in mourning/ Over the weedy acres of your brow’, ‘The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.’ She uses natural imagery in order to navigate her grief and to immortalise her memory of her father, therefore once again highlighting how crucial nature’s presence is in our lives.
It seems a shame that such an important message, written around 70 years ago, remains extremely relevant and largely unaddressed. However, it exemplifies Plath’s foresight and her conscientiousness when writing The Colossus, which should be given much more credit and esteem than it has garnered.
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