Jack Folsom's Bercke Plage Pamphlet "the miracles of science, she calls them sarcastically"

Jack Folsom's Bercke Plage Pamphlet

Jack Folsom
Montana State University

Death and Rebirth in Sylvia Plath's "Berck-Plage"

Extracts

"The death of the senses, in particular the death of the visionary imagination, is what Sylvia Plath feared most. For her, a rebirth, the making of a new life, is a psychic necessity."

"Plath's motivation in writing such ugly and terrifying pictures of death is certainly not its glorification. Far more likely a motive, given Sylvia Plath's abundantly demonstrated lust for the rich textures of life, is her concern for physical and psychic survival in the face of suffering and death."