The Colossus MP

The Colossus was written by Sylvia Plath in 1959. The poem contains 6 stanzas with 5 lines in each, making 30 in total. Plath seems to be comparing their father to Colossus, a larger than life figure (statue) as well as mourning his death. The poem's underlying tone is dark and uneasy. The first stanza talks about the speaker's trouble of reconstructing her father's memory properly. In lines 3-5 in the first stanza, the speaker uses animal noises to describe the way the father spoke, and sarcastically adds "proceed from your great lips" to show how people saw him.

The second stanza begins by comparing her father to an oracle or god-like creature. However, she claims that for 30 years she's tried to "dredge the silt from your throat" which asserts that she hung on to every word he said during this time. But, this is only to add on that she is "none the wiser" after 30 years of hearing it.

In the fourth stanza, the setting is described as, "A blue sky out of the Oresteia arches above us," which comes from a trilogy of Greek Tragedies. The father is then described as "pithy and historical as the Roman Forum." These comparisons give her father very powerful qualities, to make her seem smaller as well as make his image even greater.

The end of the fifth stanza shows the speakers inability to communicate properly with her father. "Nights, I squat in the cornucopia of your left ear, out of the wind," portrays the fact that she wanted to communicate with her father, but they never truly communicated well. In the ast stanza, ''My hours are married to shadow." talks about the fact that she'll always be under him and never will escape his glory. But, the last 2 lines "No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel on the blank stones of the landing" relates to the author's acceptance of her father's death.