Week #1--Sign Inventory

Below is a sign inventory of Sylvia Plath's poem, "Medallion":

The poem curiously mixes inert natural objects with animate ones, using the sun’s reflected light to illuminate the speaker’s observations. Hard elements like rock, garnet, jewels, glass, and metal are softened by colors of orange, bronze, rose, ochre and white. The creatures in the poem, (snake, mouse, maggots) are all crawly ones and set the yardman up to seem creepy, too.

The three-line structure with wrap-around sentences and stanza breaks give a disjointed feel to the poem while reading it, even jaunty and uneven, although it looks concise as viewed on the page.

Light plays a major role in the poem, something like a magnifying glass, because the speaker observes the object through its reflections of sunlight. References to “a glasses flame” and “Sunset looked at through milk glass” reinforce this sense of inspector-like examination.

The word ‘shoelace’ seems out of place amongst the other more primitive objects. Are shoelaces really inert? If so, how do they become untied? It is a strange choice of simile, in my opinion. However, it adds a common, even mundane, quality to the poem's collection of more extraordinary objects.

Chainmail perfectly describes the scaly skin of a snake but it is a garment made of metal for chivalric knights. The word “chaste” in the last stanza seems to connect to this idea, as if the snake were some kind of virtuous hero, instead of the evil serpent of the garden of Eden.

The location is vague but really not necessary for observation of snake. However, “By the gate with star and moon/” sounds specific but not specific enough to know if star and moon are part of the gate or just appear at the time of discovery.

The only sound in the poem comes from the last word, “laugh.” It seems a macabre intrusion to an otherwise silent experience and jolts the reader. It seems to refer back to the snake’s ‘crooked grin,’ having been killed by the brick which the yardman flung at it. But why would a snake laugh? Or is it the yardman who laughs? It paints a strange picture.