Discuss the metaphors used in "Metaphors" by Sylvia Plath.

In this excellent poem by Sylvia Plath, her own experience
of pregnancy and her feelings about it through the use of a series of metaphors that are
commonly used as the basis to talk about pregnancy in our society. What is important to
realise is that this rather unique presentation of who the speaker of this poem is
thanks to her state of pregnancy relates explicitly to her identity and the way that the
baby, growing inside of her, seems to have displaced her and who she is. Perhaps this is
made most clear in the final three lines of this
poem:

I'm a
means, a stage, a cow in calf.

I've eaten a bag of green
apples,

Boarded the train there's no getting
off.

Note how the metaphors
used seem to displace the speaker in terms of her identity. Her status as being pregnant
means she is only now a "means" or a "stage" upon which her baby stands. Her ambivalent
feelings about pregnancy and motherhood are reflected in the final lines, where her
pregnancy is compared to "boarding a train" which she cannot get off. The inevitability
of the process is thus refered to, with the way that the speaker mentions that she
cannot get off presenting her as feeling trapped or restricted by what is happening to
her.