The Arrival Of The Bee Box Analysis

I ordered this, clean wood box
Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift.
I would say it was the coffin of a midget
Or a square baby
Were there not such a din in it.

The box is locked, it is dangerous.
I have to live with it overnight
And I can't keep away from it.
There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there.
There is only a little grid, no exit.

I put my eye to the grid.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy feeling of African hands
Minute and shrunk for export,
Black on black, angrily clambering.

How can I let them out?
It is the noise that appalls me most of all,
The unintelligible syllables.
It is like a Roman mob,
Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!

I lay my ear to furious Latin.
I am not a Caesar.
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.
They can be sent back.
They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.

I wonder how hungry they are.
I wonder if they would forget me
If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.
There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades,
And the petticoats of the cherry.

They might ignore me immediately
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.

The box is only temporary.

.: :.

The Arrival of the Bee Box’ is a symbolic poem and the bee box is a metaphor for Sylvia Plath herself. The bees symbolise the poet’s unconscious self which seeks freedom. The poem gives the organic view of creation. After a long strenuous battle with the tortuous self, she seems to come to terms with herself at last in these poems : “ I am in control/ Here is my honey- machine’. But actually she is not in control of the situation. The bees are angrily crying for freedom. Their words are confused and they cry like maniacs. They are hungry and they , if allowed to come out , would clamber around her. She feels depressed and despairing. Her unconscious self whispers unintelligibly to her. Unconscious self speaks in unintelligible language. Indeed unconscious self is her mad self. The box referred to is really the coffin. But her ritual death is temporary. Her conscious self is in a temporary suspension. So the poetess endures and fights the forces of despair.
Sylvia Plath’s life and poetry continue to be surrounded by controversy. Understanding her poetry requires some understanding of her short and troubled life. As a young adolescent she was anxious about not leading a typical woman’s life. She was struggling with a failed marriage and the bringing up of her two young children. Many of Plath’s poems are about herself. In this poem the speaker becomes the beekeeper herself. He owns a boxful of restless bees. The box is lot with no window in it. The speaker has to live with the box through the night as there are no windows in this box therefore he cannot see what is there inside. There is only a little grid and and no exit. Here the speaker is the owner of the box but she is afraid of the box because inside the box the bees are humming furiously. Therefore she forgets her sense of ownership. She becomes too much afraid of the bees. She thinks that she is not the source of honey so why the bees should turn on her. The final impression of poem relates to the fact that the bees control her and the owner does not control the bees at all. Sylvia Path probably is in search of her true self. The box is her mind and the "swarm" inside the box are her thoughts. She says 'I will be sweet God, I will set them free'.Only through her death will she be able to set these dark thoughts and emotions free. May be she could have written this poem while she was comtemplating suicide. The bees represent the immensely powerful and active thoughts swarming inside Sylvia Plath's head ("The unintelligible syllables / It is like a Roman mob . . ."). But one should be careful of reading suicidal thoughts into all her work. The choice to let the bees out into the world rather than let them die inside the box seems to me to represent her commitment to expressing her thoughts in poetry rather than staying quiet, as she had done through most of the aweful summer preceding the writing of the "bee poems." The box may again represent her body and how everything is trapped inside her but her body is only temporary and when she dies that she will be free. However, it does not necessarily mean that she was thinking about suicide, just her own death. like Yeats in "Sailing to Byzantium’.
Dr.Ratan Bhattacharjee

| Posted on 2009-04-05 | by a guest

.: :.

The Arrival of the Bee Box’ is a symbolic poem and the bee box is a metaphor for Sylvia Plath herself. The bees symbolise the poet’s unconscious self which seeks freedom. The poem gives the organic view of creation. After a long strenuous battle with the tortuous self, she seems to come to terms with herself at last in these poems : “ I am in control/ Here is my honey- machine’. But actually she is not in control of the situation. The bees are angrily crying for freedom. Their words are confused and they cry like maniacs. They are hungry and they , if allowed to come out , would clamber around her. She feels depressed and despairing. Her unconscious self whispers unintelligibly to her. Unconscious self speaks in unintelligible language. Indeed unconscious self is her mad self. The box referred to is really the coffin. But her ritual death is temporary. Her conscious self is in a temporary suspension. So the poetess endures and fights the forces of despair.
Sylvia Plath’s life and poetry continue to be surrounded by controversy. Understanding her poetry requires some understanding of her short and troubled life. As a young adolescent she was anxious about not leading a typical woman’s life. She was struggling with a failed marriage and the bringing up of her two young children. Many of Plath’s poems are about herself. In this poem the speaker becomes the beekeeper herself. He owns a boxful of restless bees. The box is lot with no window in it. The speaker has to live with the box through the night as there are no windows in this box therefore he cannot see what is there inside. There is only a little grid and and no exit. Here the speaker is the owner of the box but she is afraid of the box because inside the box the bees are humming furiously. Therefore she forgets her sense of ownership. She becomes too much afraid of the bees. She thinks that she is not the source of honey so why the bees should turn on her. The final impression of poem relates to the fact that the bees control her and the owner does not control the bees at all. Sylvia Path probably is in search of her true self. The box is her mind and the "swarm" inside the box are her thoughts. She says 'I will be sweet God, I will set them free'.Only through her death will she be able to set these dark thoughts and emotions free. May be she could have written this poem while she was comtemplating suicide. The bees represent the immensely powerful and active thoughts swarming inside Sylvia Plath's head ("The unintelligible syllables / It is like a Roman mob . . ."). But one should be careful of reading suicidal thoughts into all her work. The choice to let the bees out into the world rather than let them die inside the box seems to me to represent her commitment to expressing her thoughts in poetry rather than staying quiet, as she had done through most of the aweful summer preceding the writing of the "bee poems." The box may again represent her body and how everything is trapped inside her but her body is only temporary and when she dies that she will be free. However, it does not necessarily mean that she was thinking about suicide, just her own death. like Yeats in "Sailing to Byzantium’.

| Posted on 2009-04-05 | by a guest