Struggling with your analysis for ‘Fever 103’ by Sylvia Plath?
You’ve come to the right place! Here is a summary of ‘Fever 103’, along with its key themes and a step-by-step guide on how to break down the text.
We also threw in a FREE sample analysis table (also known as a TEE table) and a sample paragraph for you!
So, let’s get started!
Summary of Fever 103 by Sylvia Plath
Context
Themes Explored in Fever 103
Studying Fever 103 for HSC
Analysis of Fever 103 by Sylvia Plath
Summary of Fever 103 by Sylvia Plath
Fever 103 is a complex and powerful poem that delves into the mind of the speaker who ponders about her own innocence and purity. As the poem progresses, the speaker realises that she is too pure for the world and adopts a new mindset that allows her to transcend into her own makeshift paradise in the last few lines.
The first 9 stanzas starts off with the speaker feeling guilty about her sexual desires. With hellish metaphors and imagery, the speaker describes how she endures torment to purify her ‘sins’. However, as she can never redeem her innocence, the speaker acknowledges how her suffering is futile, and only serves to hurt her.
Stanza 10 to 12 marks the halfway point of the poem, where the speaker channels her inner emptiness into a form of purity. As the plaguing fever turns into a cleansing fire, the speaker transforms from a Hellish creature to a Godly entity, relating how her lover hurts her like how humanity hurts God.
In Stanza 13 to Stanza 18, the speaker celebrates her newfound love for herself. With delicate symbols and sexual imagery, the speaker embraces her sexuality and feels empowered without depending on men for pleasure. Soon, the speaker finds herself ascending to a ‘Paradise’ she created, where she sheds away her old society’s gender roles and religious taboos to be reborn as a free individual.
Context
Fever 103 was written three years before being published in Ariel following Plath’s death in 1965. Here are some contextual influences that shaped the way Fever 103 was written:
Confessional poetry
Sylvia Plath is well-known as a forerunner in confessional poetry, which is a literary style that branched off from the postmodernist movement in the 1950s. Confessional poetry focuses on taboo themes such as sexual guilt, depression, suicide and drug use to explore the personal revelations of the author. Through the raw vulnerability in her poems, Plath’s confessional poetry was highly confrontational and revolutionary.
Tuberculosis in the 18th and 19th Century
From early 18th to 19th century, tuberculosis was the leading cause of death that killed 1 in every 7 people until the early 20th century. Tuberculosis is a disease that is caused by a bacterial infection that targets the lungs, and it often presents with fevers, rosy cheeks, physical deterioration as well as coughs.
As tuberculosis causes the body to deteriorate until one’s mental capacity remains, society during the 18th century saw tuberculosis as a ‘purifying disease’ to the extent where it became accepted as fashionable and sophisticated. Other authors from the 18th century such as Charles Dickens and Thoreau began to describe tuberculosis as a morbid yet beautiful form of spiritual transfiguration.
Similarly, Plath’s Fever 103 uses illness as a metaphor to envision her own spiritual transformation in a tragic yet glamorous way.
Themes Explored in Fever 103
Sin and Purity
In Fever 103, the poem explores the notions of sin and purity simultaneously. In the first half of the poem, sexual desires are perceived as sinful, with Hellish imagery of toxic flames with “yellow sunken smokes” that “choke the aged and the meek” to highlight the immense pain and suffering that is necessitated when cleansing our sins.
In contrast, the second half of the poem is imbued with Heavenly symbols as the fire transforms into a force of self-love and purification in the quotes “does not my head astound you! And my/light!”. The speaker begins to ascend into a “Paradise” as a “Virgin” accompanied by “Cherubim”. This biblically allusive juxtaposition between Heaven and Hell delivers Plath’s revelation that we must first endure great pain to achieve transcendent purity.
Freedom and Independence
A central theme of Plath’s is a longing for freedom and independence from a patriarchal society. Namely, a society that expects women to be pure and innocent, whilst harbouring religious taboos against sex. At the start of Fever 103, the speaker is trapped in a Hellish world of endless guilt, where no one can save her.
Studying more of Plath’s poetry? Check out our list of Ariel by Sylvia Plath quotes here!
Ironically, it is through her own self-destruction that she finds freedom. She uses the historically allusive imagery of “Hiroshima ash and eating in./ The sin. The sin” to highlight how her death may liberate her from her guilt. Later, the speaker transcends to her own version of “Paradise”, where she escapes her society’s gender and religious ideals to reclaim her own independence in the afterlife.
Self-doubt and self-love
Fever 103 follows Plath’s journey from self-doubt to self-love. In the rhetorical question of “Pure? What does that mean?”, Plath questions her own self-worth and further emphasises her contempt for herself through morbid Gothic imagery in a Hellish landscape.
With a sudden shift in tone, Plath transforms into a defiant speaker who comes to realise that “I am too pure for you or anyone”. Her confidence peaks as she is metaphorically “going up,/ I think I may rise” into the tragic Paradise she created for herself. This abrupt shift may reflect her feverish physical and mental state as a result of her battle with bipolar disorder and depression, which ultimately led her to see death as a way to empower herself.
Studying this Text for Module A: Textual Conversations
Link #1: Resonances and dissonances between and within texts
Chances are, you’ll be studying ‘Fever 103’ by Sylvia Plath alongside ‘Fever’ by Ted Hughes.
While both ‘Fever 103’ and ‘Fever’ explore Plath’s struggle with her mental illness, there are some key differences between Plath and Hughes’ interpretation of Plath’s mental illness and its role in their personal relationship.
For one, Plath’s narrative is from an internal viewpoint, where we follow her spiritual journey from self-doubt to self-empowerment. Meanwhile, Hughes adopts an external point of view as Plath’s caretaker, who becomes desensitised and cold to his wife’s cries as a way to cope with her mental illness.
Link #2: Understand how the personal, social, cultural and historical contextual text influences the author’s perspectives and shapes meaning
Plath’s Fever 103 poem is deeply rooted in her own personal, social and cultural influences that shape the way she perceived her innocence, self-worth and freedom.
After her husband Ted has left her for his mistress, Plath was inspired to write about the destructive ramifications of sexual transgressions in Fever 103 with confrontational language such as “your body hurts me as the world hurts God”.
Furthermore, at a time when women had just earned the right to vote and own property, Plath asserted that women were entitled to the same rights and freedom as men. Strict gender roles instilled by her patriarchal society also inspired Plath to use her poems to find her value as a woman and her freedom to express her sexuality. In social movements such as the second wave of feminism, Plath was revered as a feminist artist who normalised female anger and pioneered women’s free will and independence.
How to Analyse Fever 103 by Sylvia Plath in 3 Steps
The key to writing an amazing essay is to complete a strong analysis of the text! It is important that you understand the text and its ideas, techniques and purpose all the way through before putting your pen on paper.
It is only after you’ve analysed your text is when you can start writing your thesis!
Here is the ultimate guide on how to analyse ‘Fever 103’ in three simple steps!
Step 1: Choose your example
The best example you can choose is one with a technique. Techniques provide the opportunity for you to write an in-depth analysis of the text, which would boost the quality of your essay.
To give you a better idea, we have chosen this quote from Stanza 1 and 2 of ‘Fever 103’:
Are dull, dull as the triple
Tongues of dull, fat Ceberus
…Incapable
Of licking clean
Step 2: Identify your technique(s)
To really ace your essay, you will need to find techniques that can help support your argument!
A great tip is to be on the lookout for examples with techniques such as metaphors, symbols, recurring motifs, and similes, which can allow you to delve into its meaning on a deeper level! Try to avoid surface-level techniques such as alliteration which can be difficult to dive deeper into.
It’s also a good idea to find an example with multiple techniques so you can build up a really strong analysis.
For the quote above, we have found techniques, which include Hellish imagery, symbolism, mythological allusion and repetition.
Step 3: Write the analysis
Once you’ve finished your analysis, you’re ready to write!
When writing your analysis in your PEEL paragraph, it is important that you explain what the effect of the technique is. Otherwise, you will fall into the trap of technique labelling, which can look like this:
Plath uses Hellish imagery, symbolism, mythological allusion and repetition in “Cerberus…incapable of licking clean” to show how she can never be pure.
Instead, we need to explain how each of these techniques support our point. By doing this, we can write a cohesive essay that promotes our argument effectively! Here is an example of how we can do this:
Plath represents her self-doubt and guilt with Hellish imagery, featuring a mythologically allusive “Cerberus” who is “incapable of licking clean” her sins, with repetition of “dull, dull as a triple” to symbolise her endless cycle of torment that is fruitless as she is unable to reclaim her innocence.
Need some help analysing other texts?
Check out other texts we’ve created guides for below:
- Jasper Jones
- Howl’s Moving Castle
- Ransom
- Away by Michael Gow
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- ‘Red’ by Ted Hughes
- Photograph 51
- Frank Hurley: The Man Who Made History
- Mabo
- Rhapsody on a Windy Night
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
- Things Fall Apart
- Run Lola Run
- Like a House on Fire
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Kate Lynn Law graduated in 2017 with an all rounders HSC award and an ATAR of 97.65. Passionate about mentoring, she enjoys working with high school students to improve their academic, work and life skills in preparation for the HSC and what comes next. An avid blogger, Kate had administered a creative writing page for over 2000 people since 2013, writing to an international audience since her early teenage years.
