"Metaphors" by Sylvia Plath is exactly what it sounds like, a list of nine metaphors in nine lines with nine syllables each with a title that is nine letters long. In each metaphor, they portray the same image of a pregnant woman whose anxiety is increasingly overwhelming her. Her anxiety has been building for nine months and her best way to express her emotions is to look herself in the mirror and just say what she is. "Metaphors" by Sylvia Plath overall shows her readers that pregnancy isn't the magical nine months that it is perceived to be; she expresses her anxiety through her insecurity and unease through her nine lines of metaphors. 

To tackle the close reading head on, the best way to do it is by exploring the nine syllable metaphors. "I'm a riddle with nine syllables," explicitly gives us our meter, but there isn't a set rhythm, which could be attributed to the anxiety that the pregnant narrator feels with her child. She feels anxiety because she is nervousness, fearful of the unknown, and worried of what may happen after she gives birth (Line 1).  "An elephant, a ponderous house," is meant to give reference to the narrator's large size with the elephant, and if the pattern of nines keeps going it is safe to assume she is also nine months pregnant and almost ready for child birth (Line 2).  The "ponderous house" suggests that she is housing something, giving our first clue that the narrator is pregnant, and that the baby weight she has gained to carry her child has caused her to move slowly and clumsily as an elephant (Line 2). The writer then makes reference to herself as "a melon strolling on two tendrils"; tendrils are thin vines, and the way it is written it is assumed that the narrator is naturally a petite woman, with long, slender legs (Line 3). The melon -- her swollen belly -- carries her child and receives nutrients from the body, as a melon receives nutrients from its roots. 

"O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!" consists of three parts (Line 4). The "red fruit" is most likely the fetus, because the baby is protected by a sack of blood inside the womb, and the fruit is, of course, the fruit of her womb. "Ivory" could be the bones of the baby, but it is safe to assume that it also could refer to the "fine timbers" that are her legs (Line 4). Her legs carry her and her child, and as such her legs must be a powerful as large trees to accomplish the feat. 

The line "This loaf's big with its yeasty rising." can only allude to the "bun in the oven" saying, but with sophistication (Line 5). The loaf represents the child that is being baked in the mother's stomach, and the rising illustrates how her stomach has expanded over nine months. The sixth line of the poem, "Money's new-minted in this fat purse." The "fat purse" is the expanded stomach and the money "new-minted" is the new baby (Line 6).

In saying, "I'm a means," the writer could mean she is the sole provider the way for the baby to grow and develop, or to just be the carrier (Line 7). "A stage," everyone looks at the expected mother whenever they pass her in the grocery store or at the park or walking down the street, they try not to even though they cannot help it (Line 7). They may try to drown the mother with advice that may seem unusual or inappropriate, because people want to think they are helpful, but in reality they pressure the expected mother. The expected mother is the stage, because everyone does look at her. She can't help it. People impose on her and it makes her uncomfortable and insecure. It makes her anxious and afraid if an elderly lady who brags about her fifteen pound baby and fed them rocks for years or something crazy like that and the expected mother fears she may go through the same thing. She becomes the center of attention and the narrator obviously does not like it. At the end of the line, "A cow in calf." (Line 7) she feels insecure and thinks that she looks like a cow (Line 7). In the eighth line she makes the metaphor "I've eaten a bag of green apples," while green apples are known to swell once inside the stomach, the narrator takes this to focus on the size she has gained with her pregnancy (Line 8). 

Finally, we have "Boarded the train there's no getting off" (Line 9). The narrator has accepted her fate, she knows that there is nothing she can do about the child growing inside her and she must see it through. Along the way she has not only swollen with her child, but also with fear, with anxiety, with insecurity, she hates how she has gained weight and become a ponderous house. Her tone gives the final line a powerful message that she is scared, and she just wants it to be over.

"Metaphors", nine lines of nine syllables covering nine months of the life of a pregnant woman. Everyone says that pregnancy is magical in the long run, the narrator gives the harsh reality that pregnancy is not a joyful experience. Pregnancy is portrayed to be full of fear, to be judged, to be used for the one cause of carrying a child, to suffer alone, and to wait for it to finally be over. The metaphors are just a clever way to allude that the narrator is pregnant, each one shows a deeper meaning, a deeper meaning that can only be reached after reading, re-reading, and looking between the lines. 

Sylvia Plath has shown that pregnancy is not nine months of magic, it is filled with anxiety, insecurity and unease. Sylvia Plath was indeed pregnant with her first child when the poem was written, but why is it important? The narrator's fear, her depression, her anxiety, her feelings of being used, judged, self-disgust, her disgust of her size, and her hard work to take care of her unborn child, are representative of Plath's own feelings. Plath's feelings are why the poem is so powerful, and why nine syllables in nine lines by a nine months pregnant author can mean so much. 

