I've never read Silvia Plath before, but the history behind her poetry and the personal connection she had with them is remarkable. Lady Lazarus is Plath's epitaph; it's her way of justifying and honoring her death. The poem reads like an ancient hymn and it is filled with morbid descriptions of Plath's hatred for herself and the rest of humanity.
Plath describes her body as being "my skin/Bright as a Nazi lampshade" implying that her skin is very pale and seemingly dead. She compares herself to Lazarus through her apparent zombie-like skin and physical features. She is the walking dead ready to die at any moment.
The ending of the poem is what really stunned me. Plath wants to start a new life and end the current one she has. She says, "Herr God, Herr Lucifer / Beware / Beware / Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air." Plath is charging headlong into the multidimensional beings and ready to challenge them if they chose to persecute her. She calls herself a phoenix, the bird of fire, which is used to symbolize the renewal of life and the start of her new journey.
I feel that there is almost too much going on in this story and that my analysis is terribly shallow, but a story of this depth has to be put into simpler terms in order to understand the bits and pieces that make it up. Incredible stuff.
