Use of Angels in Smith’s Annunciation and Plath’s Black Rook in Rainy W

Use of Angels in Smiths Annunciation and Plaths Black diddle in Rainy Weather Since biblical times, people have looked to angels as sources of comfort, inspiration, protection, and solace. Yet very little is said in the news just about what angels actually are the Bible focuses mainly on their deeds, and leaves their nature to the imagination. Consequently, few people really understand them, and the very notion of angels is a kind of open-ended idea subject to personal interpretation and design. Poets, never ones to let a chance at interpretation go by, have written about angels, using them as both subject and metaphor. Two poems of note where angels are used as metaphors are Annunciation, by Kay Smith and Black Rook in Rainy Weather, by Sylvia Plath. In these poems, angels are referenced not for their own sake, but rather for the metaphorical meanings which the reader may draw from them. In Annunciation, Smith uses an angel to represent greatness left pursued yet unattained a life, while Plath uses angels to represent unusual occurences which brighten or add meaning to an otherwise dreary life. Annunciation begins with a note about the standard artistic depiction of the Annunciation, in which the angel Gabriel appears to the Virgin bloody shame to declare that she will be the Mother of God. Smith notes that in paintings of the event, Mary is always reading a book she seems trying to keep her place in the book, despite the arrival and great presence of Gabriel. In the poem, Smith herself paints a portrait of a young girl at a crossroads two girls at a museum in Italy on some sort of trip. We two sometimes women (line 20) implies that the girls are fairly young, but since they seem to be alone in concert they have likel... ...vene in the lives of the faithful in times of trial. Plath uses angels as a metaphor for strength and hold in a time of darkness. Angels are so commonly felt but poorly understood that it is possible to attach many different meani ngs to them. In poetry, angels can represent a spectrum of ideas and feels, from awe to swear to strength to fear, just to list a few examples. In Annunciation, Kay Smith uses the majesty and biblical significance of the angel Gabriel to represent a feeling of greatness and destiny that the speaker let slip through her grasp. In Black Rook in Rainy Weather, Sylvia Plath uses angels to symbolize the brightness and hope that make an otherwise bleak and dreary life livable. Clearly, angels, like our lives themselves, can have whatever meaning we choose endow upon them. In the arms of the angels, may you find some comfort here.