Sheep In Fog

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1963

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Isolation in Depression

Plath’s focus is on the feeling of despondent isolation created by depression, which is metaphorically expressed in the descriptions of the landscape around her. The “fog” she experiences is both literal and mental, and it doesn’t allow her to see beyond it. This creates a deep sense of loneliness. The “hills step off into whiteness” (Line 1), or oblivion, and Plath can’t see where they land. The “far / Fields” (Line 11-12) beneath the “hills” (Line 1) feel “threaten[ing]” (Line 13) to her because they can’t be anticipated. She can’t see or imagine what they hold. There may be green meadows, “a heaven” (Line 14), or just as likely “a dark water” (Line 15) to drown in. Her avenues for escape are limited. “The train” (Line 4) has left, and she’s on a “slow / [h]orse” (Line 6) whose cadence reminds her of “dolorous bells” (Line 7), a sound echoing a funeral procession. Her sense of isolation is enhanced by the fact she feels judged by “people or stars” (Line 2) who she feels she has failed. Like a single “flower” (Line 10), she feels “left out” (Line 19) to “blacke[n]” (Line 9). Even her “bones” (Line 11) are consumed by “stillness” (Line 11), a stasis that keeps her from moving forward. Lastly, she imagines herself as “starless and fatherless” (Line 15), completely isolated without either spiritual or human guides. The poem’s eerie quietness echoes the feelings of depression, where the sufferer is wrapped in a “fog,” unable to fully be present in the world.

The Good Shepherd is Absent

When Otto Plath died, his daughter was eight; Plath admitted she harbored a feeling that this event showed he was abandoning her. While doubtful of her ties to Christianity, Plath uses deliberate images from Psalm 23, one of the most famous in the Bible, to show her feelings of abandonment by mortal fathers (Otto Plath, Ted Hughes) as well as spiritual ones. Many spiritual people take comfort in Psalm 23, which begins, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” positioning the worshipper as a sheep with Christ as the shepherd. If Plath is correlating herself with the “sheep in fog” of her title, then she is perhaps looking for a spiritual guide to help her do so. Christian myth often depicts Christ as being a good shepherd who leads his flock of followers, particularly taking care of lost or errant sheep. Here, however, the shepherd is nowhere to be found. In Psalm 23, Christ encourages the worshipper to “lie down in green pastures” and to be “lead [. . .] by still waters.” Plath distorts these same images and fills them with doubt. The “green pastures” become “fields [. . . that] threaten” (Lines 12-13); “still waters” for her are “dark” (Line 15) and “starless and fatherless” (Line 15). She cannot expect forgiveness or comfort. She feels like a “sheep in fog” or “a flower left out” (Line 10), both items abandoned without tending. This is then echoed by her inability to see beyond the “valley of the shadow of death,” or through the “fog.” For Plath, there is no shepherd, just the morning in the valley “blackening” (Line 9)

Directional Confusion

In the final sixth months of her life, Sylvia Plath was trying to navigate her life away from her domestic relationship with estranged husband Ted Hughes, struggling to find a new direction as a single mother with creative goals. Outbursts of hopeful productivity were contrasted with feelings of being rudderless and despairing. This directionless quality is captured metaphorically in “Sheep in Fog.” Plath appears in the poem on a “horse” (Line 6) which slowly moves through the landscape. Midway through an unknown journey, she never describes her planned destination. The landscape itself becomes surreal, almost like a drawing that is unfinished, or scribbled out. Much of this world shifts without warning, both for Plath and the reader. “The Sheep in Fog” of the title are never mentioned again, as if they are apparitions. The “hills step off into whiteness” (Line 1) and “the train leaves” (line 4) a ghostly impression of its “breath” (Line 4). What is solid seems unmoored, and the unseen “far / Fields melt [Plath’s] heart” (Lines 11-12). If the landscape is not erased, it is “blackening” (Line 9) like “all morning the / Morning has been” (Lines 8-9), like “a flower left out” (Line 10) or a “heaven / Starless and fatherless, a dark water” (Lines 14-15). Either state is an erasure, a locale where definitive direction—and perhaps hope—is impossible.