Both are written in the first person, so both are writing about themselves. Plath's poem seems distressing not for just the reader but for Plath herself as she is writing about burning her own life or old letters from perhaps Ted Hughes she wants them to be destroyed as even the attic is not peaceful with them there.
While Path's poem seems to be distressing, Hughes poem is calm, romantic and full of nature as he writes about imagining a fox, which seems like a symbol for imagination itself as from the beginning we know Hughes is imagining 'I imagine this midnight moment's forest:' he seems to imagining a fox as he can't express his own feelings and would rather use the fox.
While Hughes uses a Fox as the main focus of the poem, foxes are known for their cunning and mischievous ways so perhaps Hughes connected his own thoughts with that of a fox? Unlike Hughes Plath uses a main focus of the fire, 'I made a fire.' She uses a fire because fire is known for its permanent destructive ways, Plath obviously wants to permanently destroy these letters. Although, when she destroys the letters she still can't find peace 'extinguishes nothing'
Plath while destroying the letters/ writing is having a conflict between her own writing and her life as a house wife. Plath did everything to keep her family a float and also try to keep her poetry alive. Plath is tired of having this conflict 'being tired' 'I was tired' and as soon as she starts to get rid of the letters the poem starts to have some striking imagery of birds 'Rising and flying, but blinded. They would flutter off, black and glittering, they would be coal angels'. as though something has lifted from her. But again even though the letters are gone the memories are still there.
I am unsure of the conflict that connects the two poems as Hughes is having a conflict with his imagination and how he really feels and Plath who is having conflict in everything in her life
I am also unsure about why Plath writes at the end 'That is immortal.'
Is she saying that nature is immortal?
'Telling the particles of the clouds, the leaves, the water what immortality is.'
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