Getting There Lyrics
How far is it now?
The gigantic gorilla interior
Of the wheels move, they appall me ---
The terrible brains
Of Krupp, black muzzles
Revolving, the sound
Punching out Absence! Like cannon.
It is Russia I have to get across, it is some war or other.
I am dragging my body
Quietly through the straw of the boxcars.
Now is the time for bribery.
What do wheels eat, these wheels
Fixed to their arcs like gods,
The silver leash of the will ----
Inexorable. And their pride!
All the gods know destinations.
I am a letter in this slot!
I fly to a name, two eyes.
Will there be fire, will there be bread?
Here there is such mud.
It is a trainstop, the nurses
Undergoing the faucet water, its veils, veils in a nunnery,
Touching their wounded,
The men the blood still pumps forward,
Legs, arms piled outside
The tent of unending cries ----
A hospital of dolls.
And the men, what is left of the men
Pumped ahead by these pistons, this blood
Into the next mile,
The next hour ----
Dynasty of broken arrows!
There is mud on my feet,
Thick, red and slipping. It is Adam's side,
This earth I rise from, and I in agony.
I cannot undo myself, and the train is steaming.
Steaming and breathing, its teeth
Ready to roll, like a devil's.
There is a minute at the end of it
A minute, a dewdrop.
How far is it?
It is so small
The place I am getting to, why are there these obstacles ----
The body of this woman,
Charred skirts and deathmask
Mourned by religious figures, by garlanded children.
And now detonations ----
Thunder and guns.
The fire's between us.
Is there no place
Turning and turning in the middle air,
Untouchable and untouchable.
The train is dragging itself, it is screaming ----
An animal
Insane for the destination,
The bloodspot,
The face at the end of the flare.
I shall bury the wounded like pupas,
I shall count and bury the dead.
Let their souls writhe in like dew,
Incense in my track.
The carriages rock, they are cradles.
And I, stepping from this skin
Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces
About
‘Getting there’ was written in the weeks leading up to Plath’s suicide. This poem is characterised by a desire to restore her broken psyche through death and rebirth; a fundamental question of identity. There is also an additional interpretation, that of the historical and political content, where the journey is a metaphor for the inhumanity and destruction of wars; the travelling mutilated bodies a metaphor for its victims. Like ‘Little Fugue’ and ‘Daddy’, it has attracted criticism that Plath exploited historical violence for personal ends, in terms of her creative poetry..
It conveys a narrator actively searching for a recovered sense of self through death. A long and ambiguous poem, the length of ‘Getting There’ reflects the journey undertaken by Plath to achieve spiritual wholeness. The narrator who dies and is resurrected could be seen as a precursor to ‘Lady Lazarus.’ The speaker asks ‘how far is it? / how far is it now,’ like a small, vulnerable child on a long car — or in this context train — journey, yet emphasiseas her determination to arrive at an unknown destination. She ‘drags’ her body towards rebirth.
Structure
The poem is unusual in that Plath abandons her usual methodical scheme of two or three or four lined stanzas. Instead it is organised into three stanzas, two of 33 lines each and finishing with a couplet. The length is related to the long arduous journey she is travelling to achieve her spiritual rebirth. She repeats ‘how far is it’ to convey her yearning for this renewal.
Language and Imagery
There are multiple examples of atrocities on this journey. The train is sinister, as in much of Plath’s poetry, for example, ‘Sheep in Fog’ and ‘Daddy’. Here the inanimate train becomes a ‘gigantic gorilla’. The reference to ‘box cars’ may echo the transportation of Jews to the death camps. However, the poem also represents holocaust throughout the ages; the recurrent nature of war. A more personal metaphor includes the reference to the soul as ‘dew’. The journey ends with the image of forgetting — ‘Lethe’ — and rebirth in the form of the ‘pure’ baby.
Despite frequent historical references and segues, the poem remains firmly in the present and future tense. This brings the violence and horror of the past much closer to home for the reader. This is unusual for Plath who is known for detaching and removing herself and the reader from shocking or emotional scenes and imagery. The turmoil Plath is feeling when she writes this poem is tangible through this.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
- 1.Morning Song
- 2.The Couriers
- 3.Sheep in Fog
- 5.Lady Lazarus
- 6.Tulips
- 7.Cut
- 8.Elm
- 11.Berck-Plage
- 12.Ariel
- 13.Death & Co.
- 14.Lesbos
- 16.Gulliver
- 17.Getting There
- 18.Medusa
- 21.Mary’s Song
- 23.The Rival
- 24.Daddy
- 25.You’re
- 26.Fever 103°
- 27.The Bee Meeting
- 29.Stings
- 30.The Swarm
- 31.Wintering
- 32.The Hanging Man
- 33.Little Fugue
- 34.Years
- 36.Totem
- 37.Paralytic
- 38.Balloons
- 39.Poppies in July
- 40.Kindness
- 41.Contusion
- 42.Edge
- 43.Words