What is the poem
about?
- On the surface, the poem is about mushrooms quietly growing in a nighttime forest.
- They poke their heads from the leafy, pine-needled forest floor and eventually sprout from the cracks in a city sidewalk.
- The poem is an extended metaphor.
- The mushrooms seem to represent an oppressed population- most likely women- who are mounting a quiet revolution.
- At the end of the poem, we’re told that, by morning, they’ll have the respenct they deserve.
- Plath’s personification of the mushrooms can be seen as a way of expressing the plight of women in the 1960’s. The ‘perfectly voiceless’ fungus represent the silent but growing majority of women, hidden in darkness, gradually, quietly, pushing until they ‘inherit the earth.’
- Regular stanzas – it is almost and though Plath has crafted every aspect of this poem to mimic or reflect the 1960’s woman. All the stanzas are the same, identical, they behave perfectly and as we expect them to – the lack of spontaneity reveals the societal expectations of women at the time.
- All stanzas – the increasing power of women and their fight for equality.
- Stanzas being the same length/ equal represent the equality women will eventually have.
- Syllables on every line – allows us to hear and feel the restraints the mushrooms and women are pushing and fighting against.
- Free verse – the mushrooms growing. Also the growing independence of women and how they no longer rely on men.
Annotations:
Additional helpful resources:
http://genius.com/2903102
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