Task:

• Your Name: Akane, Grace, Madison, Natalie
• Title & Author of the Piece: "Medusa" by Sylvia Plath
• Topic: Sylvia Plath’s mother represented by Medusa
• Task to Accomplish: analyze tone shifts of this poem and how they contribute the the meaning of a poem as a whole

Opening Shot:

• What is happening in the first few lines? Plath is introducing her subject by setting the tone by describing her subject.  
• What is your first impression of the speaker's TONE? She is disgusted by the person/object she is describing
• What is your evidence from the text? ”You house your unnerving head-God-ball”  “Lens of mercies”“Ears cupping the sea's incoherences”
• What are your observations about the speaker or situation based on the TONE and evidence? The author and the thing she is describing do not have a healthy relationship as she is not very fond of this person/object.

Shift #1:

• Describe the shift in FOCUS, TONE, or BOTH: Plath shifts from describing her mother to describing the relationship between her mother. Similarly, now that she is talking about her relationship, her tone shifts from one of disgust of her mother to an accusatory tone of how her mother has ruined their relationship
• Techniques/devices used to achieve this shift: Rhetorical Question
• Evidence: “Did I escape, I wonder?” “old barnacled umbilicus”
• Observations: After this shift the poem becomes easier for the audience to understand what Plath was describing. The audience sees that the relationship between Plath and her mother is unhealthy. Her mother is described as suffocating her leaving her “dead and moneyless”

So What?:

• Describe the shift in FOCUS, TONE, or BOTH Focus of the poem shifts from an accusation to a rejection. Tone shifts from an accusatory/hateful tone to a condemnatory tone. She is condemning her mother for being so overbearing
• Techniques/devices used to achieve this shift; Simile reinforced by rhetorical question
• Evidence: “Overexposed, like an X-ray Who do you think you are?”
• Observations: Plath concludes the poem with the dramatic line, “There is nothing between us” But how can there be nothing between them? They are mother and daughter; they will always be connected somehow. She could also be saying that their lives have paralleled each other to the point where there is literally nothing that separates their lives.