Published in 1965 in her collection Ariel, Sylvia Plath’s ‘Fever 103°’is a confessional poem with a trajectory from a guilty conscience to the emergence of a new, confident being. It is preoccupied with the dictates of purity and morality that bind human beings, especially women, in the rigid structures of the patriarchal world with no scope of escape. However, the speaker, who is assumed to be Plath herself owing to the traditional reading of her other poems,  is both- aware of these shackles and their all consuming nature as well as intent to break free from it and transcend into a heavenly domain that rejects all mankind. 

 

The poem can be split into two halves where the former lays emphasis on an unknown sin that the speaker has committed. It is punishing not only her through the high temperature of her body but also everything and everyone around her. The latter half witnesses a change in its tone as well as theme where the speaker pictures a new strength and identity powerful enough to be self-sufficient and above all materialistic pleasures. With a consistent use of figurative language, Plath successfully demonstrates her mastery over the verse form.

 

 

Fever 103° | Analysis

 

The poem is composed of eighteen tercets (three line stanzas) with a first person pronoun. A consistent rhyme scheme is absent and as a confessional poem, Plath’s life events serve as a context to understand her complex style of poetry. 

 

 

Fever 103° | Analysis, Stanza I

 

“Pure? What does it mean?        

The tongues of hell          

Are dull, dull as the triple”  

 

Plath’s commencement of her poem with an outright question concerning the notion of purity renders her art a radical status in the era of modern poetry. Since most of her work is read in her biographical context, the speaker of the poem can be assumed as Plath herself. Her interrogation of the meaning of purity subtly reveals the social construction of this moral value that is held too dear in patriarchal structures. It can also be argued that since the poem was written post the Second World War, her concern also reflects the genocide of Jews by the Nazis purely on the basis of racial superiority and self-claimed purity. 

 

She instates a direct relation between impurity and hell, hinting at her guilty conscious for being an impure woman. By employing a body metaphor and repetition as literary devices, she equates her own body, which is suffering from high temperature, to the dull and unbearable conditions of hell. 

 

 

Fever 103° | Analysis, Stanza II

 

“Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus     

Who wheezes at the gate? Incapable

Of licking clean”

 

Cerberus is a three-headed hound who is a watchdog of the underworld in Greek mythology. The lines above, however, negate the power of this mythological animal. Instead, it is shown to be incapable and lazy, like any other dog whose efforts go in vain when trying to lick up the dirt from its own body. Once again, clean being the key word, the speaker commands our attention to the paradox underlying the relationship between cleanliness and hell, as only the impure souls are doomed to the tortures of hell. 

 

 

Fever 103° | Analysis,  Stanza III

“The aching tendon, the sin, the sin.     

The tinder cries. 

The indelible smell”           

 

The state of suffering that the speaker is encountering is observed through the words “aguey tendon,” which refers to the shivering of the muscles as an after-effect of fever, and “tinder cries,” which is an expression of her agony through tears. The pain is a punishment for the sin that is still unknown to the readers, but its presence and existence are surely made clear by the repetition of the word “sin”. Her ill body has also produced an unforgettable smell that is compared to a burnt-out candle.

 

Fever 103° | Analysis, Stanza IV

 

“Of a snuffed candle!     

Love, love, the low-smoke roll        

From me, like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright.”   

While “snuffled candle” indicates its association with the speaker’s burning body, it also notes the fear of extinguishing her own light (life). The alliterative “love” possibly is a call to someone who is dear to her, as she wants to convey the smoke produced by the burned-out candle, which surrounds her body, suffocating her. This image compels her to imagine her own life ending like the famous dancer Isadora Duncan’s who was strangled accidentally by her scarf. 

 

Fever 103° | Analysis, Stanza V

 

“One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel,

Such yellow sullen smokes

Make their own element. They will not rise,”

The burning sensation has affected her body, with depression that is manifesting into the alliteration “sullen smoke,” which would not rise above, repelling its natural course of direction. This deflection what the speaker calls “own element,” is emblematic of the poet’s own creativity and unique style of writing in the composition of this poem.

 

Fever 103° | Analysis, Stanza VI

“But trundle round the globe

Choking the aged and the meek,

The weak

The infecting smoke from the previous set of lines will travel around and suffocate people who are not immune to modernity. Old and meek are the ones who follow the dictates of society without posing any threat and lack the strength to counter the wrongdoings. The poem, right from the onset, hints at the presumed woman speaker’s sin and impure soul, which is not acceptable in a patriarchal society. The impurity of a woman poses a threat to the conventions laid down by the pre-modern society, which is mirrored in the “choking” of the traditional-minded people. 

 

Fever 103° | Analysis, Stanza VII

“Hothouse baby in its crib,

The ghastly orchid

Hanging its hanging garden in the air,”

The pungent smoke will also consume babies and natural vegetation. Nothing is spared by the yellow smoke the speaker imagines to be emitting from her body due to her sins. 

 

Fever 103° | Analysis, Stanza VIII

“Devilish leopard!

Radiation turned it white

And killed it in an hour.”

Radiation is suggestive of the heat produced by the feverish body that does not even spare the leopard, who fails to escape the smoke despite its speed. Turning white reveals the nature of the sin that is infecting everything and everyone around the speaker. It first strips you off externally and then kills you internally. Thus, there is a double torture one has to experience. 

 

Fever 103° | Analysis, Stanza IX

“Greasing the bodies of adulterers

Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.    

The sin. The sin.”   

 

Away from its literal meaning, greasing here is disguised as killing. In this stanza, by invoking the historical catastrophe of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the speaker intensifies the effect the sin is capable of exhibiting. These lines also bring the reader closer to an interpretation of the sin as surrounding one’s sexual freedom. Adultery is a personal attack that Plath herself experienced at her husband’s disposal, which led to a depressed and mentally unstable life before her death. In penning down her own guilty conscience, she is also voicing the infidelity of her husband and all men in general, which will reduce their existence to ash, owing to the nature of their sin. 

 

Fever 103° | Analysis, Stanza X

“Darling, all night

I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.  

The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss.”   

The poem now assumes a sexual tone, and the speaker compares herself to a flickering candle without any moment of peace. The high temperature has resulted in sweaty sheets that give her an impression of a “lecher’s kiss”, something unwelcoming as well as outside the bounds of a conventional relationship.

 

Fever 103° | Analysis, Stanza XI

 

“Three days. Three nights.

Lemon water, chicken

Water, water makes me retch.”

Adding to her miserable condition is the consumption of various kinds of waters as a remedy that has turned her nauseous. Now, the sight of plain water itself is unappealing to her. 

 

Stanza XII

“I am too pure for you or anyone.

Your body

Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern.”  

A sudden assertion of her purity and higher stature transforms the course of the poem. If read in line with her personal life, Plath was cheated on by Ted Hughes. Her claim to be “too pure” is a way of overcoming the feeling of belittlement she must have undergone upon learning about Hughes’s affair. She is renouncing the need for a man in her life, as the last line of the stanza reflects on the domestic violence Plath was a victim of. The use of a simile to compare her pain to that of God, who is witnessing a slow destruction of his beautiful creation, is visionary. 

 

Stanza XIII

“My head is a moon      

Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin

Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.”  

A newfound identity highlights these lines as the speaker assumes her position as a source of light with metaphorical expressions of  “lantern” and “ moon”. She is establishing her worth, which is sensitive and invaluable. Her head is representative of her bright and creative genius, and her body is as attractive as gold.

 

Stanza XIV

“Does not my heart astound you! And my light!  

All by myself, I am a huge camellia

Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.”  

The speaker seeks validation of her sexual freedom, which was earlier in the captives of the rigid strictures of a patriarchal world. With the words “heat”, “light”, “glow”, “coming”, and “flush”, sexual overtones can be observed, which she intends to celebrate. The repetitive use of the word “my” in this stanza shows the possession of her sexuality, which was previously absent.  

 

Stanza XV

“I think I am going up,

I think I may rise——

The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I”

With this newfound freedom and assertion of her identity, she is attempting to elevate herself in a transcendental act. The reference to her rising is similarly observed in her other poem, ‘Lady Lazarus’, where she intends to rise out of the ashes.

 

Stanza XVI

I am a pure acetylene 

Virgin

Attended by roses,”

Acetylene is a chemical that is highly unstable in its purest form and inflammable in nature. The speaker draws a comparison between her pure, untouched character and the reactionary nature of Acetylene. While the early parts of the poem are preoccupied with her sin, the last few lines encourage her to stop lamenting about the sin committed and instead to find power and significance in what she believes to be. 

 

Stanza XVII

“By kisses, by cherubim,

By whatever these pink things mean!

Not you, nor him”

These lines reject all mankind who are otherwise deemed responsible for wooing, caring, and protecting women. Instead, the speaker has found her solace in the company of the “pink things” of nature. 

 

Stanza XVIII

“Nor him, nor him

(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)——

To Paradise.”

 

She sees herself as an entity above any human form and is ready to ascend to heaven. She is leaving her past behind to pursue a future with possibilities and opportunities never given to her before. As a self-sufficient woman, she establishes a new identity.