Question

“Edge” is one of the last poems Plath wrote before her suicide. How does knowing this information affect your understanding of the poem?

Answer 1

The poem has a different understanding once you take into account she committed suicide soon after. In the poem she talk of being dead in the figurative sense and hiding it with smiles of accomplishment and illusions. Instead after you see she meant she was dead inside and when she talked of her feet saying we've gone to far she means she's tired of living. And again she talks of flowe petals closing as she closes in on herself.