Perfect Light Themes

This Study Guide consists of approximately 41 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Perfect Light.
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Perfect Light Themes

This Study Guide consists of approximately 41 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Perfect Light.
This section contains 724 words
(approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Perfect Light Study Guide

The Brevity of Life

The repetition of the word "daffodils" in "Perfect Light" is more than a technique of style to make the poem cohesive. It is also evidence of the dominant theme that runs through many of the poems in Birthday Letters: life is preciously short, and even shorter for those who take their own life. The word appears five times in this poem. Three times the word "daffodils" is used with the word "like" to make a direct comparison between the subject, Plath, and the daffodils. Hughes presents such a powerful, recurrent connection between them that the flowers become his ill-fated wife as she becomes them. The basis of this relationship and the glue that holds it together is the brevity of life, both that of the daffodils and Plath's. In a poem called "Daffodils" from this collection, Hughes writes that "We knew we'd live for ever...

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This section contains 724 words
(approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Perfect Light Study Guide
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Perfect Light from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.