Analyze the following poem, "Medallion" by Sylvia Plath.

Sylvia Plath's poem, "Medallion" is about a snake she
finds dead, and the details of its body that she notices. Written in 1959, its form was
strictly "controlled." Plath uses imagery, literary devices, and sensory details,
especially colors.

First, we "see" the image of a snake,
bronze, lying in the sun near a gate with a "star and moon"
design.

By the
gate with star and moon

Worked into the peeled orange
wood

The bronze snake lay in the
sun

Next, Plath uses a
metaphor, comparing the snake to a shoelace. The snake is dead, but the author uses
personification to describe the snake's pliable jaw and "crooked
grin."

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Inert as a shoelace;
dead

But pliable still, his
jaw

Unhinged and his grin
crooked,

A metaphor is used
again; it describes the snake's tongue. It is a "rose-colored arrow." Fearlessly (in
death, or is the speaker comfortable with snakes?), she hangs the dead creature over her
hand, noticing his " href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vermillion">vermillion" (red
or reddish-orange) eye.

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Tongue a rose-colored
arrow.

Over my hand I hung
him.

His little vermilion
eye

The poet's description of
the snake's eye continues into the next stanza; it is not only red, but seemingly like
fire captured in glass, which she notices as she turns him in the sunlight. At the end
of the stanza, she begins a thought, recalling a moment in the past when she "split a
rock."

Ignited
with a glassed flame

As I turned him in the
light;

When I split a rock one
time

The memory of that
"split rock" comes back: inside the rock were garnets that burned with the same fiery
red color. The poet notes that "bust" changed the color of the snake's back to ocher
which is:

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...[a] color...ranging from pale yellow to an
orangish or reddish
yellow

"Bust" here
may refer to the snake's broken back, for we find later that it was
obviously killed with a brick, so that death may have changed the snake's color,
especially with its placement in the direct sun. However, the speaker does not praise or
admire the color, but compares it to a color on a trout that has been left out in the
sun—its color "ruined."

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The garnet bits burned like
that.

href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bust">Bust dulled his back to
href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ocher">ocher

The
way sun ruins a trout.

As the
writer continues to examine the dead snake, she notices the the belly still has the
color it had in life—the word "fire" inferring that it is still beautiful and vibrant.
Reference to the snake's chain-mail would seemingly refer to its protective skin,
toughened because a snake travels on its belly. "Old jewels" may refer to old colors
that are still visible, smoldering—glowing like the embers of a
fire...

Yet
his belly kept its fire

Going under the
chainmail,

The old jewels smoldering
there

...in each scale of the
belly. Another metaphor compares the colors to a sunset viewed through milky white
glass...and then she sees the maggots, they "coil"—like a
snake...

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In each href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/opaque">opaque
belly-scale:

Sunset looked at through milk
glass.

And I saw white maggots
coil

The distasteful "worms"
are described with a simile: as thin as pins. They are visible through the bruised flesh
where its "innards" bulge as with a meal...

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Thin as pins in the dark
bruise

Where innards bulged as
if

He were digesting a
mouse.

Straight like a knife,
in death the snake is pure. It is evident that its death came at the hands of the
yardman, who threw a brick, and laughed. There is a sense of sorrow at the loss of such
beauty.

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Knifelike, he was chaste
enough,

Pure death's-metal. The
yard-man's

Flung brick perfected his
laugh.