Point of View

“The Moon and the Yew Tree” is spoken from the perspective of an unnamed narrator. The speaker uses first person singular pronouns and possessives throughout the verse. In the first stanza of the poem the speaker introduces “the light of the mind, cold and planetary” (1). This is not explicitly specified as the mind of the speaker. But in the following lines the speaker’s position becomes more apparent: “The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God / Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility” (4). Passages such as these present the speaker as inhabiting, through intimate contemplation of personal interiority, an almost divine prescience.

There are plausible grounds for regarding the speaker as a proxy for the author of the poem herself. Sylvia Plath conceivably shares the reticence towards the European tradition of Christian practice and scripture, and, through the speaker...