The Paralelle lives of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath

"Any writer, any artist, I'm sure is obsessed with death, a prerequisite for life" -Anne Sexton

Throughout time artists have always been known as a bit eccentric. Because they are a thinking class, their minds expand a bit farther, a bit more abstractly, than what most would consider the "norm." Thus, their opinion on certain things may seem a little strange to the average onlooker. One area where artists' ideas have been identified as especially strange is where death is concerned. This is no different for those artists whose craft is that of the literary arts. For centuries writers have written about their own ideas, and obsession pertaining to death. Poets in particular have always seemed to be especially enamored with this theme. Though most have entertained their strange morbid obsessions and still carried about their lives, some harbor fixations so strong, that it proves stronger than they, consuming them entirely.

Sylvia Plath

23 Fitzroy Road, London : The house where Sylvia P...

Diane Middlebrook

Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton are perfect examples of this type of tragedy. Looking now, at their lives and especially their writings, it should be no surprise that both of these women's lives ended at the mercy of their own hands.

Sylvia Plath was born in Jamaica Plan, Massachusetts to Otto and Aurelia Plath. Her childhood was a blissful one, until the age of eight when the death of her father occurred. This scarred her permanently. She was close to her father and as a child looked at him as a God of sorts. When he passed away, she was not ready to live without him and never really let him go. The detrimental effect of this however, did not surface for years to come.

At age eight she also published her first works in the Boston Sunday Herald. Aside from her father's death her life seemed...