“Hard” and “brutal” are adjectives not often used when talking about poetry. Be that as it may, there are simply no other words for Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus." Readers can be, and often are, disgusted by the gruesome images (“Soon, soon the flesh/The grave ate the cave will be/Home with me”) and offended by the numerous references to the Holocaust (“A kind of walking miracle , my skin/Shine like a Nazi lampshade). Plath's aggressive metaphors are difficult for many novice readers, as are the themes of death, resurrection, and revenge. What drives the entire narrative forward is the transformation Plath's character undergoes as she explores these themes. From the title, which alludes to the biblical character, Lazarus, we know that this will be a poem about resurrection and rebirth, particularly that of Plath's character, Lady Lazarus. , a young woman (And I'm a smiling woman/I'm only thirty) with a propensity for suicide (“I guess you could say I have a calling.”) We start to get a sense of who Lady Lazarus is in the fourth verse : “Pull away the napkin/O my enemy./Do I terrify you?” This person is a ...