Sylvia Plath: Poems Lesson Plan

Most of the text in “You’re” describes how the speaker views her unborn child, which is why it stands out when she says the fetus is “trawling your dark as owls do.” What does it mean for the fetus to “trawl [its] dark”?

To trawl is often to drag a net through the sea, looking to pick up fish. But it also means to sift through something in search of a specific thing. The fetus, whom the speaker also compares to a fish, is perhaps trapped in the “net” that is the womb for now. But it’s also doing its own trawling. The fetus searches the dark of the womb for something. The speaker compares this action to owls hunting. When owls hunt, they cannot see and rely mostly on their...