Alienation, Modern Realism, and Metonymy in Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel”

This paper examines the symbolic implications of Sylvia Plath‘s ―Ariel‖ (1962). Plath is mostly recognized for her symbolic realistic techniques. As such, the study will introduce her writing techniques to have a comprehensive understanding of her writing manners. Realism is a common writing mode during the last phases of modernism. Therefore, Plath utilizes literary symbolic devices within expressionism in realistic techniques because she had been influenced by contemporary realistic poets. Being so, Plath wrote in the form of expressionism had not any concern with the state of individuals. They depended on expressionism to condemn complicated contemporary issues regarding industrialism and capitalism as products of systems not individuals. Being a realistic poet, similarly, Plath uses symbolic realistic verse and conversations in some of her poems. Thus, the study will focus on the metonymic symbolism in the poem as an expression of her reality around her.