This poem is set in North Tawton, Mid-Dorset, the home of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. The mood is complex. Plath sets up images of beauty and happiness and, through her choice of words and imagery, contradicts herself and the reader’s expectations with contrasting negative ideas. For example, in stanza one the autumn colour is contrasted with the image of the ‘rat’s tail’. In stanzas five and six she refers to apples as ‘golden’, and yet they are in ‘a thick, gray death-soup’. These contrasts are woven throughout the poem.

It is worth noting that Hughes and Plath started their married life in America, returned to London and then moved to Devon in 1961, where Hughes remained for the rest of his life. It is a particularly beautiful part of England. The negativity on Plath’s part probably derives from her inner turmoil, difficult marriage and depression.

Structure
The poem comprises seven stanzas of five lines each, known as quintains, a construction Plath favoured. There is no regular rhyme scheme and the lines are unequal in length. In the last stanza Plath uses internal rhyme — ‘high’ in line three and ‘Thermopylae’ in line five — to achieve a resolution.

Language and Imagery
Throughout the poem Plath weaves positives and negatives. So ‘green’ in stanza two may represent growth and fecundity, or it may bring to mind jealousy, decay and mould. Golden applies are contrasted with ‘gray death-soup’. In her poems Plath rarely makes reference to historical events — ‘The Swarm’ is one exception — but here she refers to Thermopylae where the outnumbered Greeks made a famous ‘last stand’.