Comment 9 of 9, added on November 20th, 2009 at 12:20 PM.

This poem definitely contains a message. Sylvia Plath's poems almost always contain a message and it is ridiculous to asssume that there is no meaning in any of them without extensive research on the poem. At the very least, the emotions that she exerts through her work is worth mentioning as a theme.

Kelsey from United States

Comment 7 of 9, added on April 22nd, 2009 at 3:42 AM.

When looking at any piece of literature, one must be careful not to bring their own emotions and opinions into the work. I believe this is the largest obstacle any critical reader must overcome. Sylvia Plath is an excellent example of one writer many people mistakenly intepret, mostly because she is probably one of the most difficult authors to understand. For example, her poem \"Mirror\" is about the effects of aging and her piece "Metaphors" is simply an allusionary reference to pregnancy. Neither poem is about feminism, or dealing with the burden of parenthood as many people attempt to assert. The poem simply does not support this. Likewise, this poem "Sow" is not about obese people or jealousy; Plath the wrote this poem with the underlying theme of pregnancy and lethargy--a matter which was close to Plath's own heart and reverberates through many of her works. First of all, the central action of the poem is simply a neighbor who is excitedly making the journey to see their neighbors enormous, secret prized hog. In the first half of the poem we see the hog from the speaker's view. Through her use of diction and visual imagery, Plath sets the reader up in an almost mythical atmosphere on the neighbors journey to see the sow. They are led by lantern night on a dusky evening. The hogh itself is shrouded in mystery and the "maze of barns" the speaker must travel to to glimpse it further supports the mysterious tone. The speaker asserts that the hog is so prized that it is not made for either motherhood, or food. A shift in diction occurs in line 17. The words Plath chooses from here on no longer support the mythical auro or awe-inspiring nature of the pig. It is important that the negative diction used in the shift occurs as soon as Plath begins to talk about motherhood--more specifically that the pig is too important to have her bulk "shilled" with "feat-foot ninnies" begging her for a "swig at [her] pink teats." However, despite the speaker's assertion that the hog is far too important for this task, the reader draws a much different conclusion. The hog's "brobdingnag bulk" is an allusion to Jonathan's Swift classic, satirical attack of humanity, Gulliver's Travels. In the novel the Brobdingnags are a group of giants nearly 10x the size of the Swift's hero, Lemuel Gulliver. This reference helps the author establish a larger-than-life image in the mind of the reader far more effectively than using a word such as "huge" or "enormous" bulk. The "black compost", "fat-rutted eyes" establish further negative connotations. The hog's dream is about a boar who is "worthy" enough to mate her because the marvelous beast was able to gore a knight on a battlefield. Yet, in the back of the reader's mind we must establish that, most likely, the hog is simply lazy and her "dream-filled" eyes are most likely the side effects of the "seven troughed seas" the hog is used to ingesting every day. Basically, we have what is referred to as an unreliable narrorator--or a speaker whose point of view is a counterpoint to what the author wants the reader to understand in a piece of literature.

Molly from United States