Plath's "The Arrival of the Bee Box"

After a few close readings of “The Arrival of the Bee Box,” I began thinking about the poem in two different ways. First I interpreted it on a literal level, that it’s a snapshot of the arrival of a bee box. Since Sylvia’s father was a beekeeper this scene was probably more or less familiar to her. I then interpreted the poem on a more metaphorical level, with the bee box as a metaphor for Sylvia herself and the bees as a representation of her thoughts/declining mental state.  The description of the box, for me, supports this reading, “The box is locked, it is dangerous / I have to live with it overnight / And I can’t keep away from it” (lines 6-8).  Here, the box represents her mind, something she literally must live with without any chance of escape.  Since it is likely that she was suffering from depression at the time, we can see how her mind could be described as a dangerous place.  She continues to describe the inside of the box “It is dark, dark.../ Black on black, angrily clambering” (lines 12, 15).  We can read these lines on a merely descriptive level, but they can also be used to support the other reading of the poem. Her mind is a dark place that breeds thoughts that she cannot control and the bees represent these negative thoughts “It is the noise that appalls me most of all, / The unintelligible syllables. / It is like a Roman mob, / Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!” (lines 17-20).   Here she describes the swarm of bees and how they are only really dangerous when they come in multitudes.  Likewise it is only when the “unintelligible syllables” of her thoughts reach a level she can no longer ignore that they become truly dangerous for her.  A sort of tension develops in the poem as we consider how her thoughts and feelings grow into this unignorable swarm.
 In the next stanza she attempts to convince herself that she can control them “I have simply ordered a box of maniacs / They can be sent back. / They can die, I need not feed them nothing, I am the owner” (lines 23-25). Her decision to call the bees “maniacs” seems important and may allude to her own feelings toward herself, that these thoughts/feelings are making her insane. She asserts, though, that she is the one in control but the thought of overcoming them scares her.  I think the last stanza in which she states “I am no source of honey / So why should they turn on me? / Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.” (lines 33-34) represents not only her decision to set herself free but also to do it by the act of creation.  Through poetry she can become “sweet God” and create an external space for her thoughts so they will not overwhelm her. Through her poetry, her thoughts can also live on forever, which I felt was exemplified in the last line “The box is only temporary” (line 36).  Here, she states that the box is only a temporary place for her feelings and she wants to set them free but I think it can also be interpreted as a greater statement about life and death in general. I think perhaps she is saying her mind and body are only temporary and she can find a way to live forever through poetry.