Superman and Paula Browns new snowsuit Sylvia Plath

Superman and Paula Brown’s new snowsuit. Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath • Sylvia Plath is most well known for her poetry • Her novel The Bell Jar (1966) has echoes of her own life, as it records a young woman’s descent into mental illness and suicidal tendencies. • Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 near Boston Massachussetts. • As an American student at Cambridge University she met Ted Hughes, whom she married in 1956, though they later separated. • In 1963 Sylvia Plath took her own life. • For many years Ted Hughes refused to comment on their relationship, but shortly before his death, in 1998, he published a series of poems on the subject in The Birthday Letters.

Summary • The title is well chosen – for the first part of the story is about Superman and the second about the snowsuit. • The story begins with pleasant fantasy and ends in unpleasant reality. There is no Superman to rescue the narrator – only Uncle Frank to help her accept what has happened. Basic plot summary - • The story tells how the narrator (whose name never appears) plays games in which she makes up adventures for Superman. Later she is invited to Paula Brown’s birthday party. Paula is proud of her birthday present, a blue snowsuit from Sweden. • Some time later, Paula is playing tag in the snow when another child pushes her and she falls into an oil slick, which ruins her snowsuit. Paula blames the narrator and the other children also join in the accusation. Although her Uncle Frank believes her, the narrator has no happy ending to her story – everyone is convinced that she is to blame for the damage to the snowsuit.

Characters • The narrator, Uncle Frank, David Sterling, Sheldon Fein, Paula Brown and Mother. Identify the features of each character. • Look at the text and highlight / underline their descriptions.

What do we learn about Paula Brown? • Find evidence of her femininity. • What might her red hair signify about her personality? • Describe how she treats the narrator. We learn that Paula Brown is very feminine from her description: “white organdie dress, her red hair tied in sausage curls with a satin bow”. From this description we can see she also has bright red hair; red is generally used to signify aggression, so we can assume that Paula is an angry person prone to irrational outbursts. In the text she appears to be very wealthy and likes to show this to the other characters. Paula does not treat the narrator very fairly and comes across as being very spoilt.

Characters • Learning intention – To understand how the characters help us relate to the story and it’s themes.

Paula Brown • Paula Brown lives in a colourful, picturesque place (Somerset Terrace, ideas of a sun terrace) and from what we hear about her she seems to have a fairly nice, colourful life. • In contrast to this the narrator goes home to a ‘dark, ’ ‘long hall’ where the ‘window-panes were fringed with frost. ’ • This shows that the narrator and Paula are from very different worlds. • Paula is a privileged child who comes from a dream-like world and we find out that the narrator’s ‘technicolour dreams’ are nothing but a mere childhood fantasy.

The narrator • It is tempting to read this story as autobiography, but this would be a mistake. The story tells a general truth – people do make false accusations, and innocent people are sometimes blamed for things they have not done. • Although it is clearly influenced by Plath’s life – – The chief character is a girl, who recalls the outbreak of war while she was a child. – She is an imaginative person, who prefers inventing dramas to more social or athletic games. • In many ways her experiences are not very unusual. Mostly she recalls quite pleasant things, like winning a prize at school. • One terrible event occurs almost through chance – she is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her “crime” does not seem really serious. But her experience of false accusation is described in such a way that most readers will identify with it and shows how such an experience can have a lasting effect.

David Sterling • David at first appears as a rather admirable character. • He shares the narrator’s imaginative impulses, and wants to help create the Superman dramas. • He is more realistic than the narrator, as he finds it harder to see Uncle Frank as Superman in disguise. • But David is not able to keep faith with his friend. When the word goes out that he has ruined the snowsuit, David has the task of bringing his mother’s suggestion to the narrator’s family.

• • • Themes Scapegoats Fantasy and reality Corruption and betrayal Loss of innocence Growing up / childhood • Using your notes, write a PEEP paragraph for each theme, answering the following question – Write about a text which explores an important theme.

PEEP Paragraphs Example: P – In the storys exposition, childhood is shown as a time of imagination and wonder. E – Plath tells us she ‘marveled at moving beacons’ and that she viewed the planes as ‘shooting stars’. E – the word choice of ‘marveled’ suggest a child captivated by what they can see and we can imagine the pleasure she takes from simple situations. The vivid simile again demonstrates how she could take something monotonous and make it magical. P- The writer successfully creates a dreamlike tone for the reader and we are captivated by the image of an innocent child, just as she is by the planes.

Sheldon Fein • Sheldon is something of a stereotype. • He is described as a “sallow (sickly or pale) mamma's boy” whom the other boys despise a weakling. • There is not much sympathy for Sheldon. He is so weak he is quickly corrupted into the cruel torturer of flies. He waits for Jimmy to back up Paula’s accusation, then adds his voice to theirs in saying: “You did it”.

Uncle Frank • We do not know how Uncle Frank is related to the narrator. Is he the brother of her mother or of her late father? • He is certainly affectionate and protective towards his niece. He swings her into the air, and when he speaks there is “a big love in his voice”. She obviously loves him and likes to think that Superman is lodging in her home, disguised.

Mother • The narrator's father has died before the start of the story and she lives with her mother and uncle. • Her mother barely appears in the story, and never seems decisive or effectual. She says she is happy her husband didn't live to see what things in the USA have “come to”, rather than wishing him alive to fight for the country as Uncle Frank is about to do. • Later she tells the narrator off for not admitting to spoiling Paula's snowsuit. She says she believes her daughter, but the claim is unconvincing.

Historical context • The narrator tells us directly that the events in the story take place in wartime. The opening of the story is the phrase: “The year war began…” • Throughout the story there are reminders of the war: - Uncle Frank is “waiting to be drafted” (to join the armed services). - Sheldon pretends to be a Nazi, while his Uncle is a prisoner in Germany. - There is a war film showing with Snow White. - The narrator wins a prize for drawing the best Civil Defence signs.

Place • The setting of the story is in the eastern USA, near Boston. • Although the USA has entered the war, it is being fought far away in the Pacific and Europe. • The children learn about Civil Defence but there is no hint that the war will interfere with their security.

Time in the narrator’s life • We can also understand time in terms of a person's life, with its various stages. • This story marks the end of childhood as a time of trust and innocence. Adults are no longer powerful people who can make things right or save the narrator from trouble – they are seen to be as powerless as children. • In fact here it is children who have more or less manipulated the adults into believing their version of events. • In childhood, time can be measured in school years, and the narrator does this, referring to the fifth grade, for example.

Imagery • Mecca and Jerusalem are holy places to which Muslims and Jews make pilgrimages. For the narrator, the airport was a place that she hoped one day to visit to see the planes more closely. • Salvador Dali was a famous Spanish painter. His best-known work is in the style known as surrealistic. It is highly realistic in its detail but puts things into arrangements which seem impossible or which confuse the scale of different things. Like paintings of Dali, her vivid dreams, may seem wholly believable showing the strength of her imagination. But in reality the things she imagines are out of her reach. • Daedalus was a famous inventor in Greek myth. King Minos of Crete kept him prisoner with his son, Icarus. Daedalus made wings with which he and Icarus escaped. But Icarus flew too near the sun, and the wax in the wings melted, so he fell to his death. The comparison could allude to the idea of experiences which harm us in some way and the fragility of childhood. Also that the narrator fears the moment that she leaves her fantasy and come back to reality.

Technique Quotation Analysis Metaphor (13) ‘The airport was my Mecca, my Jerusalem’ Plath uses imagery to show us how the main protagonist feels about the airport. This metaphor helps us to paint a picture in our mind of a vast holey place and this explains to us how magnificent the airport is to the narrator. Simile (18) ‘My flying dreams were believable as a landscape by Dali. ’ Simile (19) ‘A breathless sense of having tumbled like Icarus from the sky. . . ’ Metaphor (67) ‘At recess, Sheldon became a Nazi’ Simile (127) ‘Her angora mittens were dripping like black cat’s fur’ Simile (122 -23) ‘We all froze when she went down on her side as if we were playing statues’

Simile (187 -8) ‘feeling the black shadow creeping up the underside of the world like flood tide’ Simile (190) ‘wiped away like the crude drawings of a child. . . ’ Metaphor (67) ‘The threat of war was seeping in everywhere. ’ Metaphor (77) ‘hair tied up in sausage curls’ Metaphor (190) ‘the colossal blackboard of the dark’ Simile (190 -1) ‘in coloured chalk from the colossal blackboard of the dark. ’