The confessional nature of Anne Sexton’s “Wanting to Die” makes the internal external, and involves an exploration of the personal body as an object of public study rather than an object of privacy.
The body becomes a subject of study in the first stanza when the speaker addresses an unnamed “you” who has asked a question the speaker is trying to answer. Through the speaker’s answer, the reader can start to hypothesize what it was that the “you” asked. The question appears to involve an attempted suicide by the speaker. The speaker explains that she has “nothing against life,” but just cannot reconcile the desire to live with the desire to die (4). The comparison of suicides to carpenters creates an analogy of a crafted object to the body, equating the two (8-9). The speaker explains that suicides ask “which tools” with which to build— meaning in this case, the ways to end life (8). The speaker also admits her way of thinking about the body is different from the “you.” She states, “I did not think of my body at needle point” (16). Here, the speaker appears to have a very detached attitude toward her body. This phrase also allows the reader to think the “you” has a different interpretation of the speaker’s body. This phrasing allows for the public, represented by the “you,” to study her body. The detached attitude appears again when the speaker states, “Suicides have already betrayed the body” (18).
The body of a suicide is then compared to a child, stillborn and yet not quite dead (19). Here, this stanza describes how a suicide never forgets the feeling of relief experienced. They are “dazzled, they can’t forget a drug so sweet / that even children would look on and smile” (20-21). By describing the body in this way, the speaker is inviting the reader into a study of the body, inviting them into a conversation on the topic of suicide and how suicidal thoughts affect a person. This invitational thread continues in the confessional nature of the rest of the poem. The speaker is relating her own experience and emotions on suicide: “To thrust all that life under your tongue!” is a statement made in awe, in wonder of the power given to a suicide to take control and extinguish life at will (22). These internal thoughts and emotions become external and become a topic of conversation. They readers are now allowed to discuss the “almost unnameable lust,” the desire to die (3).
This discussion of the body continues with the concept of death personified, waiting for the speaker to “so delicately undo an old wound” (25-26). The old wound being something related to the speaker’s body, to her suicide attempt. Possibly, death is waiting for her to try again and successfully “empty my breath from its bad prison” (27). The bad prison represents the speaker’s body from which she wishes to escape.
The bodily language present juxtaposes the content about ending the body’s life. The internal, controversial thoughts of suicide become external. The language the speaker uses invites the reader, the “you,” to enter a conversation with the suicide, to consider a different perspective, to hear the confession of wanting to die.
Questions:
What is one of the main purpose’s of confessional poetry? Is Sexton successful in that purpose or does she have a different purpose in this poem?
What is significant of comparing a suicide to a carpenter? What, if any, religious connotations can be made between the two? Were those connotations intentional? Or was Sexton focusing on a more literal interpretation of “carpenter”?
What is one of the main purpose’s of confessional poetry? Is Sexton successful in that purpose or does she have a different purpose in this poem?
In regards to your first question, I think you did a good job answering it towards the beginning of your post: the internal is made external. I think also that Sexton discussing suicide is not a cry for help, as we might expect to see in a more contemporary setting (a red flag especially if we were to see this in the writing of one of our students), but rather an exploration for Sexton of how she feels about suicide, and towards her actually attempted suicide. I think that exploration provides a pretty clean look at what makes the “confessional” school tick.
What is significant of comparing a suicide to a carpenter? What, if any, religious connotations can be made between the two? Were those connotations intentional? Or was Sexton focusing on a more literal interpretation of “carpenter”?
If there were a religious connotation, Jesus of course was a carpenter studying under his earthly father, as Joseph was himself a carpenter. If we read this with Christianity in mind, I suppose there is an interpretation where Jesus’ sacrifice is in fact some kind of suicide; he willingly went to his death, (much in the same way “Suicide by cop” entails a person willingly going to their deaths under the guns of the police) as a sacrifice for the original sin of mankind. If we hold onto this religious reading, then Sexton is offering herself as a sacrifice for mankind, for her “confession” to reach other people.