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Sylvia Plath - The Thin People

They are always with us, the thin people
Meager of dimension as the gray people

On a movie-screen.  They
Are unreal, we say:

It was only in a movie, it was only
In a war making evil headlines when we

Were small that they famished and
Grew so lean and would not round

Out their stalky limbs again though peace
Plumped the bellies of the mice

Under the meanest table.
It was during the long hunger-battle

They found their talent to persevere
In thinness, to come, later,

Into our bad dreams, their menace
Not guns, not abuses,

But a thin silence.
Wrapped in flea-ridded donkey skins,

Empty of complaint, forever
Drinking vinegar from tin cups: they wore

The insufferable nimbus of the lot-drawn
Scapegoat.  But so thin,

So weedy a race could not remain in dreams,
Could not remain outlandish victims

In the contracted country of the head
Any more than the old woman in her mud hut could

Keep from cutting fat meat
Out of the side of the generous moon when it

Set foot nightly in her yard
Until her knife had pared

The moon to a rind of little light.
Now the thin people do not obliterate

Themselves as the dawn
Grayness blues, reddens, and the outline

Of the world comes clear and fills with color.
They persist in the sunlit room: the wallpaper

Frieze of cabbage-roses and cornflowers pales
Under their thin-lipped smiles,

Their withering kingship.
How they prop each other up!

We own no wilderness rich and deep enough
For stronghold against their stiff

Battalions.  See, how the tree boles flatten
And lose their good browns

If the thin people simply stand in the forest,
Making the world go thin as a wasp's nest

And grayer; not even moving their bones.

Added: on April 25th, 2006 at 8:46 PM | Viewed: 6682 times | Comments and analysis of The Thin People by Sylvia Plath Comments (5)


The Thin People - Comments and Information

Poet: Sylvia Plath
Poem: The Thin People
Volume: The Collected Poems
Year: Published/Written in 1957

Comment 5 of 5, added on May 24th, 2007 at 8:01 AM.

Kylie, Your comment was stated without thought.
I am a high school student, and even so, i understand the meaning behind this.
This poem has been a favourite of mine since i was 12 years old. If a 12 year old can interpret plath with a greater understanding than you, you may wish to take a look at yourself. Syliva Plath is a Brilliant writer,
Bronte

Bee from Australia
Comment 4 of 5, added on April 29th, 2006 at 10:39 AM.

Yes... this poem has nothing at all to do with skinny people in pop culture. 1) the Holocaust is a reoccuring theme in Plaths poems. 2) there was not an obession with being thin when the poem was written. 3) I dont think Plath would waste her time writting about pop culture in that manner

Jesi from United States
Comment 3 of 5, added on April 25th, 2006 at 8:46 PM.

I just read some comments on Sylvia Plath's "The Thin People" and they are some of the most shallow and ridiculous things I have ever heard. There is no way that Plath wrote that poem about thin people in movies... it is so much more deep than that! The thin people she is refering to have to be the Jews during the Holocaust. The reference to movies, which say "the thin people / Meager of dimension as the gray people / on a movie-screen" is talking about the movies they showed about WWII and the Holocaust. The issue is that the rest of the world is being taken down because it isn't dealing with big issues that need to be dealt with, like the Holocaust. I don't mean to sound rude, but I just thought that it should be clear that, although there probably are some anorexics out there starring in movies, Plath's poem is not about that... at all.

Abby Thomason from United States

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