Lady Lazarus Violence

Yikes. Lampshades? That's gruesome, but this image is rooted in a rumored reality. Lady L's reference is to the lampshades that the Nazis were said to have made out of the skins of their victims. This is a violent and visceral image, and we are forced to contemplate the relationship between the persecutors of the Nazis and Lady L's (imagined?) persecutors, whoever they are.

Here Lady Lazarus introduces us to her imaginary circus, where she's forced to deal with the violence of the spectators who strip her. She has no power here; she must submit to being a spectacle for other people's entertainment.

Lady L tells us that the "peanut-crunching crowd" has to drop some dough to see her, and that there's an extra charge for touching or speaking. Lady Lazarus feels as if she has no options, that everyone wants a (literal) piece of her. In the poem, they're after her hair, her blood. Creep city.

In this one small line, Lady Lazarus imagines that she's burning to death in a concentration camp crematorium. The smallness of the line contrasts with the horror of what's happening.

Lady Lazarus lists the remnants of the crematorium fires; all that's left of the people burned alive is ash and trinkets. The image may be quiet—it's just a subdued list of objects—but we know the horror that leads to that ash.

In the final moment of the poem, Lady Lazarus imagines that she can turn the tables on her persecutors. She resurrects herself, and returns to the living to "eat men like air." While this is an ambiguous line, we can be sure that it's violent. She's returning from the dead with cannibalistic urges, after all. The cycle of violence in this poem never disappears.