Ariel Themes

On its surface, "Ariel" is about a wild horseback ride. But when we read just a little bit more closely, we see that the poem is interested less in the actual horseback ride and more in the transfo...

When "Ariel" begins, the speaker is powerless. Ariel takes off at a wild gallop, and the speaker can't control her horse at all. The cool thing about the poem, though, is that instead of gaining po...

Man and the natural world? It's more like "woman" and the natural world in this case. "Ariel" tells the story of the speaker's transformative experience when she gets up close and personal with nat...

Sylvia Plath: her name's almost synonymous with suicide in popular culture, so it's really no surprise that "Ariel" deals with death. But don't get too down when reading this poem; death here is ac...