In lines 13-15, Lady Lazarus illustrates to us what she looks like, but her description of herself is very disturbing. She depicts herself as a sort of zombie with eye pits instead of eyeballs and sour breath that will strangely “vanish in a day”(15). Does she mean that her sour breath will disappear once she dies?

Compared to the previous stanzas, lines 16 - 24 seems to make more sense in regards to what Lady Lazarus is telling us. Earlier, she seemed more vague and relied on metaphors and similes to explain what she was talking about which caused quite a lot of confusion and questions. In line 16-18, Lady Lazarus tells us that once her “sour breath” (14) disappears, “the flesh”(16) eaten by her grave will feel “at home”(18) on her. It seems …show more content…
The word “filament”(25) is a slender thread like object or fiber that can be found in plants, animals, vacuums, and electric light bulbs. So it may seem like Lady Lazarus is visualizing her body having trillions of fibers or “filaments”(25). In lines 26-27, she creates an imagery of a large crowd, presumably at a circus. This crowd is fighting their way into the circus to see her “perform”. Line 28-30, depicts her as a stripper being stripped naked by the crowd, her audience. In lines 31-33, the crowd is able to see her “hands”, “knees”, “skin”, and “bone” as they strip her away of not only her clothing, but her body as well. The crowd is violently and savagely ripping her body apart. This brutal imagery symbolizes her inability to have power over her own body as this happy “peanut-crunching crowd”(26) is brutalizing her by savagely “eating” her alive, as she watches in horror. The line “Nevertheless I am the same, identical woman”(34), represents her maintaining her identity even though this crowd has ripped her apart. In other words, the crowd dehumanized her by ripping off her skin and clothes, an attempt to strip her of her identity. But despite this horrific event that the crowd put her through, she remains the same woman. There may also be a possibility that by her making it clear to us that she is the “same identical woman”(34), she is letting us know that although she has been resurrected from the dead, she is the same woman that she was before death. She is stressing to us that she is the same woman who died and came back to life. She has not been reincarnated nor is the “dead” version of her just a twin. She is the walking miracle who died then came back to life for the third time. It seems that Lady Lazarus is fighting for power and control in this poem. Although she seems to have power in this poem through her use of words, imagery, and language,