1) What was your impression of the collection as a whole? Have you read it before/studied it? Did your impressions change or opinions differ on re-reading? Did you gain any new insights?
2) How do you feel Plath depicts motherhood (in poems like “Morning Star”). Do you think she sees it as a positive or negative experience?
3) Do you feel that the content and themes of these poems bears any relation or relevance to life today?
4) Did you notice any particular images of the “feminine” in the poems - mythological women or women from history for instance? Robert Lowell stated that, in these poems, "almost everything we customarily think of as feminine is turned on its head"? Do you agree with this?
5) Is it possible to read the collection without being influenced by what we know of Plath’s life and death? Or is this an integral part of understanding the collection?
6) Death is a defining presence in the collection - in what guises does death appear?
Is death counter-balanced in any way with images of birth, rebirth or renewal?
7) There are numerous allusions to Nazi brutality and the Holocaust, in "Lady Lazarus" and some other poems, are these justified? What do you think is their purpose?
8) Is there a single poem that you think embodies Plaths’ poetic voice more than any other?
9) Did you have a favourite/least favourite poem? Why?
10) Images of illness, disintegration appear frequently within the collection - what is the overall effect of this? What impression does it give?
11) Daddy is a character that appears several times in this collection - what do you think was Plath’s relationship to her father? Hughes said in “Birthday Letters” that "a god / That was not your [Plath's] father / Was a false god." Do you agree with this?
12) Plath writes often about nature and the elements - do you think these poems are effective? Do they fit with her other themes?
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