Poppies in October Essay Questions

What is the significance of the woman in the ambulance?

The speaker describes how nothing is as red as the poppies, including "the woman in the ambulance/whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly." This juxtaposition is striking: Plath not only shares an image of a bleeding and possibly dying woman, but suggests, in an ironic turn, that she is beautiful in a manner similar to flowers. This comparison helps build out the speaker's worldview, giving us the impression that, for them, beauty is connected to sensation and intensity. For the speaker, the woman is similar to flowers because she is striking, shocking, colorful, and full of feeling, even if that feeling is negative. In contrast, the speaker scorns the demure or repressed, preferring the rawness represented by both the natural world and the bleeding woman.

How does Plath contrast the rural and the urban in this poem?

In this poem, there are two distinct settings. One is the natural landscape with the "sun-clouds" and vibrant red poppies, which stand out from their surroundings. The other is a distinctly urban setting, suggested by the industrial waste of "carbon monoxides" and the business-world apparition of "eyes dulled to a halt under bowlers." Plath uses these settings to emphasize the beauty of the natural world and the vibrancy of the poppies, contrasting them with the monotony of the city. She also suggests that the urban and industrial have a soporific or blinding quality, demonstrating that passers-by, with "eyes dulled," have lost interest in natural beauty. However, Plath ultimately suggests that the natural and rural have a transformative effect on those who are open to them: by the poem's end, the colorlessness of the city appears to have been transmuted into "a forest of frost" and "a dawn of cornflowers."