For each human being, death always has been something mysterious and scary. Normally, humans are scared of losing their lives because they do not know what to expect from death. It is something that is indescribable and that nobody will ever be able to explain. However, human beings overcome death by believing in an "after-life," which means that after life, there is more to experience, thus death is just a transition and not "the end" of everything. In poetry, it is common for writers to use death as a major theme for their creations to express their fears, questions or experiences about this subject. The American woman, Sylvia Plath, is one of the well-known poets who used a lot of the theme of death in her literary works. Effectively, the poems "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" are some of Plath's most famous creations that portray her life very well and defined what she had been through throughout her life. .
Sylvia Plath, known as one of the most dynamic and admired poets of the twentieth century, attracted the attention of many readers, who saw the desperation being displayed in her works. The American poet was born in Boston in October 1932 where she was brought up by a German dad named Otto Plath and an American mother with Austrian origins named Aurelia Schober Plath (Steinberg). They lived in a middle-class society in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighbourhood. Sylvia published her first poem at the age of eight and at the same time, she had to face the death of her father. Very intelligent, sensitive and a good all-rounder, Plath was a model daughter and student, and was appreciated by everyone at school. Before entering Smith College in Massachusetts in 1950, she had already written over four hundred poems ("Sylvia Plath"). Beneath Sylvia's seemingly perfect surface, she was an unstable woman with mental issues, probably due to the death of her father.