Sylvia Plath and “The Peanut-crunching Crowd”: A Journey from Affection to Aversion

Understanding how poets respond to the people and world around them is crucial when one aims to interpret their poems, specifically when their feelings and expressions of other humans reshape as their poetic careers develop. Although different critics and biographers have attempted to shed some light on the well-known American poet Sylvia Plath's outlook on people, there seems to be no unanimous agreement among them as some claim Plath was fond of people, and others believe she abhorred them. With a closer look at her life and writings to resolve this controversy, one cannot help but notice that Plath's attitude toward people gradually changed from love to hatred. In the same vein, having analyzed Plath as a person and Plath as a poet, this paper, with a descriptive-analytic approach, initially scrutinizes how Plath viewed people in her oeuvre and then investigates why her affection for other humans changed to aversion. Among the noteworthy reasons are her different relationship failures, such as her unfulfilled relationship with her father and husband. In addition to her personal bitter experiences, other factors that contributed to her misanthropy include the impact of the Cold War in the aftermath of the Second World War, her marginalization in England, and her husband and publishers' refusal of her poetic identity and talent, which ruined her dream identity of a successful American woman.

کلیدواژه ها:

Sylvia Plath ، ” “People ، ” “Attitude ، ” “Affection ، ” “Aversion ، ” “Misanthropy”.