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“Metaphors” Introduction
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Sylvia Plath wrote "Metaphors" in March of 1959. The poem's pregnant speaker relays her deep anxiety about motherhood and her estrangement from her quickly changing body through a series of clever metaphors. These metaphors illustrate the often disorienting nature of pregnancy, which seems to make a "house" or a "stage" out of the speaker's body and threatens to render the speaker herself insignificant. "Metaphors" was collected in The Colossus and Other Poems in 1960.
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“Metaphors” Summary
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The speaker calls herself a mysterious puzzle made up of nine syllables (which corresponds to the number of syllables in each line of the poem as well as the number of lines in total), before going on to describe herself through a series of metaphors: she's an elephant, a dull and bulky house, a melon meandering about on two skinny vines. The speaker calls out to these objects—the redness of the melon's flesh, the elephant's ivory tusks, the wooden beams of the house. She's like a big loaf of bread whose yeast makes it grow ever larger. She's a bulging wallet that's filling up with newly printed money. She's an object through which something else is accomplished; the platform on which the performance takes place; a pregnant cow. She feels like she's gobbled up an entire sack of unripe apples, or that she's gotten on a train and there's no going back now.
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“Metaphors” Themes
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The Anxiety and Discomfort of Pregnancy
“Metaphors” is a poem about the weirdness and wonder of being pregnant. The speaker uses a series of inventive metaphors to describe her changing body, which has become huge and unwieldy. As the poem progresses, though, these relatively lighthearted concerns about looking like a “melon” give way to darker worries that the speaker is becoming a “means” to an end (i.e., a child) and that it’s too late to do anything about it. With both humor and pathos, the poem illustrates not only how pregnancy has estranged the speaker from her body, but also how motherhood threatens her very sense of self.
The speaker uses a series of nine-syllable “riddles” (that is, metaphors) to depict her pregnant body. While some of these are humorous and others more disturbing, they all reflect how completely foreign her own body has become.
The speaker calls herself “an elephant,” “a ponderous” (or bulky) “house,” and a “melon strolling on two tendrils” (a tendril being a threadlike growth on a plant). All of these metaphors evoke the speaker’s size and awkwardness as her pregnant body morphs into something unrecognizable. These almost cartoonish images also suggest how ludicrous the speaker feels having to walk around in this condition.
The speaker goes on to describe their pregnant form as a “loaf” of bread, “big with its yeasty rising,” and a “fat purse” full of newly printed cash. While both of these metaphors continue to describe the speaker’s physical state, they also start to hint at the speaker’s deeper anxieties. After all, a loaf of bread is meant to be consumed when it’s done rising, and the “fat purse” suggests that the speaker’s body has become a kind of currency. In other words, the speaker is frightened of losing herself through the process of carrying a child and giving birth.
Indeed, the speaker’s next few metaphors suggest that her anxiety is rooted in the fear of being a “means” to an end—that is, of losing her worth as an individual and her sense of selfhood in becoming a mother. The speaker is afraid of becoming nothing more than a “stage,” or a platform, for the main event (i.e., the child she will give birth to). And the fact that the speaker relies on so many metaphors in the first place also suggests that she’s losing touch with who she is.
The speaker goes on to say that she’s “eaten a bag of green apples,” which would certainly lead to an upset stomach and thus reflects how she's sick with worry. The green color suggests that these apples were unripe and thus signals the speaker’s feelings of not being ready for parenthood, of having jumped in too soon.
The poem ends with the speaker saying she’s “boarded the train there’s no getting off.” The speaker is anxious not just about the current state of her body, but also about becoming a parent. Pregnancy was never the end of the road here; motherhood, the speaker seems to realize, will change everything.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-9
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Metaphors”
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Lines 1-2
I'm a riddle ...
... a ponderous house,The poem begins with the speaker announcing that she is "a riddle in nine syllables." The nature of this "riddle" isn't immediately clear. In calling herself, a "riddle" in the first place, however, readers might get the sense that the speaker feels herself to be a bit of an enigma, a puzzle that needs to be solved. There's also something playful and amusing about calling herself a "riddle."
While readers don't know exactly what the "answer" to this riddle is yet, there's a major clue in this opening line: this riddle has "nine syllables," as does this first line (and, indeed, every line that follows). A quick glance at the entire poem also shows that it has nine lines total. The number nine, then, is clearly important here.
The sounds of these lines, with their liquid /l/ and nasally /n/ consonance and clipped assonance, add intensity to the poem as well:
I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
The jumble of sounds makes this first line a bit of a mouthful, again suggesting the speaker's discomfort as she struggles with a body that feels strangely new.
And in the next line, the speaker gives two more metaphors that act as clues about her state. She's an "elephant" and a "ponderous" (or big, bulky, and awkward) "house." What both of these images have in common is their massive size.
Readers might already guess at the solution to the puzzle here: what combines the number nine with feeling huge, as big as a house? Pregnancy!
The speaker is describing her changing body, which has become mysterious, riddle-like, to the speaker herself. The house metaphor suggests not only the uncomfortable clumsiness of trying to move around in a body that is suddenly so unfamiliar, but also the speaker's disorienting realization that her body is no longer hers alone: it "house[s]" another.
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Lines 3-4
A melon strolling ...
... ivory, fine timbers!
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Lines 5-6
This loaf's big ...
... this fat purse. -
Line 7
I'm a means, ... cow in calf.
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Lines 8-9
I've eaten a ...
... no getting off.
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“Metaphors” Symbols
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The Green Apples
The speaker says she has "eaten a bag of green apples" in line 8, which symbolizes her unreadiness to be a parent.
For one thing, the fact that she's gobbled up an entire bag of apples suggests that she's overdone things or gone too far in her hunger (which is perhaps a metaphor for lust or the desire for a family):
- Just as someone who's eaten a bunch of apples is likely to feel sick to their stomach afterward, the consequences of the speaker's actions (getting pregnant) are starting to catch up with her as she realizes that she's going to become a mother.
The fact that the apples are described specifically as "green" suggests that the speaker doesn't feel ready for such a responsibility just yet:
- The word "green" is often used to symbolize youth, vitality, and immaturity, and this wouldn't be the only time Plath used "green" in her writing to signify naiveté:
- For instance, in her poem "Jilted" she compares her "lean, unripened heart" to the "puny, green, and tart" plums that are not yet ripe for picking.
- The young and, at first, naive protagonist of her famous novel The Bell Jar is also named Esther Greenwood.
- As such, it's probably safe to say that the apples in this poem aren't just a literally "green" variety; their "green[ness]" suggests the speaker's feelings of not being ready for the role of motherhood.
Finally, apples are often linked with the biblical story of Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man:
- Eve infamously ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, introducing sin into the world and casting the couple out of the Garden of Eden. (While the fruit is not called an apple in the Bible, it's very often depicted as one in popular culture).
- Eating a bag of apples might thus suggest that the speaker has in some way given into temptation and/or caused her own "fall"; she's cast herself out of the seeming paradise of independence and into the difficult "wasteland" of parenthood.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 8: “I've eaten a bag of green apples,”
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“Metaphors” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Consonance
The poem uses consonance to create rhythm and intensity. Take the opening line, where the quick flurry of /l/ and /n/ sounds (not to mention the short /ih/ assonance in "riddle" and "syllables") turns this line about "a riddle" into a kind of tongue-twister:
I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
Those same sounds then carry over into line 3, which also features crisp alliteration of the /t/ sound with "two tendrils":
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
The poem's repetitive sounds just keep coming, quick and fast; these sounds seem to pile up (much like the speaker's metaphors!) so that the poem gains more intensity as it rolls along.
For another striking example, note the humming sounds of "Money's new-minted in" and "I'm a means." The consonance here makes it sound as though the speaker is talking through gritted teeth, implying her bitterness toward her new state.
The crisp alliteration of "cow in calf" has a similar effect, subtly suggesting the speaker's distaste for pregnancy and the way it threatens to rob her of autonomy and independence. The heavy, throaty /g/ sounds in "bag of green apples," meanwhile, helps to evoke the speaker's physical and mental discomfort.
Where consonance appears in the poem:- Line 1: “riddle in nine syllables”
- Line 2: “ponderous house”
- Line 3: “melon strolling on two tendrils”
- Line 4: “fruit,” “fine”
- Line 6: “Money's new-minted in”
- Line 7: “I'm,” “means,” “cow,” “calf”
- Line 8: “bag,” “green”
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Assonance
Unlock all 137 words of this analysis of Assonance in “Metaphors,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
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Alliteration
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Metaphor
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Imagery
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End-Stopped Line
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Asyndeton
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Parallelism
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“Metaphors” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Ponderous
- Tendrils
- Strolling
- Ivory
- Yeasty
- New-minted
- Means
Ponderous-
(Location in poem: Line 2: “a ponderous house”)
Bulky, dull, or slow-moving.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Metaphors”
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Form
"Metaphors" consists of a single nine-line stanza. Each line also consists of nine syllables—something the poem declares in its opening line.
Pregnancy, of course, is also nine months long! It's thus safe to say that Plath was making a very intentional and even playful choice with the poem's form. The poem subtly mimics the way that pregnancy molds the body into a new shape. Like the speaker's body, the poem is physically defined by what it's "pregnant" with—the meaning it's trying to convey.
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Meter
The poem does not use any traditional meter. That said, there is a clear structure here: each of the poem's nine lines consists of exactly nine syllables—the number of months in a pregnancy. The poem's form itself reflects its topic.
Within those nine-syllable lines, stresses vary and don't follow any regular pattern. This keeps the language feeling natural and organic rather than overly controlled.
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem doesn't use a rhyme scheme. As with its lack of meter, this keeps the poem feeling casual, conversational, and unpredictable. A tidy rhyme scheme might have given the poem a sense of rigid order and control; the poem's lack of rhyme, by contrast, subtly reflects the speaker's struggle to make sense of her changing body and her shifting identity.
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“Metaphors” Speaker
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The speaker of this poem is, first and foremost, pregnant! Her body is quickly changing, and she can't help but feel out of whack, as big and preposterous as a "melon strolling on two tendrils." She also seems to feel rather awed by what her body is capable of, by her own power to produce a new human being.
And yet, when she says, "O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers," there's a subtle sense of irony in addition to genuine reverence. She seems to feel that her body has somehow become a commodity, a material valuable only for what it will offer to someone else (i.e., her baby).
She's also clearly feeling a great deal of trepidation regarding her desire or ability to parent. She says she's "eaten a bag of green apples," a metaphor suggesting she's in over her head (with the "green[ness]" of the apples perhaps symbolizing her own immaturity). But the speaker also feels it's also too late to turn back now; "the train" has left the station.
Much of Plath's poetry is personal in nature, which has led readers to often take Plath herself as the speaker of her poems. Plath in fact did believe herself to be newly pregnant when she wrote "Metaphors," though it turned out to be a false alarm.
Whether readers interpret the speaker to be a representation of Plath or not, the speaker's anxieties definitely reflect the very real fears Plath had about giving birth and becoming a mother. Due to midcentury societal expectations around gender roles, Plath worried that motherhood would erase her identity and turn her into a "stage"—that is, a foundation for her husband and children rather than a human being in her own right.
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“Metaphors” Setting
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There is no real setting for "Metaphors." Instead, the poem is made up entirely of figurative language describing the speaker's physical and emotional state. In other words, this poem doesn't take place out in the world, but rather within the speaker's own thoughts and emotions. For instance, the "train" that the speaker "boards" in the last line of the poem isn't a real train, but a metaphorical one.
The lack of a physical setting adds to the sense of disorientation that the speaker is experiencing. It's as if being pregnant has turned her world inside out: she is suddenly hyper-aware of her body's strange new shape and what that means for her future.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Metaphors”
Literary Context
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) published "Metaphors" in her 1960 collection The Colossus and Other Poems. This collection, the only volume of poetry Plath would publish in her lifetime, showcases many of the themes that would characterize the later, more famous poems in Ariel. These include the indifference and brutality of nature, the violence of patriarchy, romantic love and sexuality, and loneliness. Plath also wrote often about the relationship between parents and children (see: "Daddy," one of her most famous poems) and about her complicated feelings on motherhood (see: "Nick and the Candlestick" and "Morning Song").
As a student of literature at Smith College in Massachusetts and later at Newnham College at the University of Cambridge, Plath learned to experiment formally with her poems. Early literary influences included everything from the poems of Emily Dickinson to the novels of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. While at university, she also studied Modernists such as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, W.H. Auden, and T.S. Eliot.
Around the same time that The Colossus and Other Poems was published, Plath and her fellow American poet Anne Sexton took a class taught by Robert Lowell, whose 1959 collection Life Studies would inspire Plath to dig deeper into the emotionally turbulent and sometimes autobiographical material that characterizes so much of her work. For this reason, Plath is often labeled a Confessionalist poet. That said, readers should avoid too closely conflating Plath with the voices that narrate her poems, as to read them as always interchangeable is to do a disservice to Plath's imaginative capacities.
While Plath saw only moderate success in her own lifetime, her death by suicide in 1963 struck a chord with readers, especially in the United States. Since then, her work—both that which was published in her lifetime and that which was released posthumously—has only continued to grow in popularity, making her one of the most influential American poets of the 21st century.
Historical Context
"Metaphors" was written in March of 1959, when Plath believed herself to be pregnant. This turned out to be a false alarm (though Plath and her husband Ted Hughes would succeed later in the year, when Plath conceived her first child, Frieda). Still, the poem illustrates with biting clarity the anxieties around motherhood with which Plath struggled.
These anxieties were not hers alone. In both the United States, where Plath was from, and England, where Plath lived when she wrote this poem, 1950s society celebrated traditional, patriarchal values. Men were expected to work outside the home and provide for their families, while women were expected to set aside their own personal ambitions in favor of raising children and running the household.
There were very few models at the time of women successfully managing both a family and a career, an absence Plath explored in-depth in her groundbreaking novel The Bell Jar. Plath's own ambitiousness couldn't eradicate her fears that motherhood would consume her and that her life would amount to nothing more than a "stage" on which her husband and children's lives would take place, a dynamic she saw modeled to her by her own mother.
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More “Metaphors” Resources
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External Resources
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Plath's Life and Work — Learn more about the poet's biography via the Poetry Foundation.
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The Poem Out Loud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
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Poems About Motherhood — The Poetry Foundation's collection of recent poems about pregnancy and motherhood.
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Red Comet — Check out a review of this best-selling 2020 biography of Plath, hailed as "both a joyful affirmation for Plath fanatics and a legitimization of her legacy."
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Sylvia Plath
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