Consider and evaluate the ways in which Sylvia Plath, in her poem 'Nick and the Candlestick' (1962) presents an individual who is motivated by selfishness.

Sylvia Plath in her poem ‘Nick and the Candlestick’ (1962) presents an individual motivated by selfishness, someone who relies on their new born baby to meet their personal needs. For example, in the poem Plath exhibits a self-serving kind of maternal love. She wishes for and relies on her baby to remove her pain and fear. These feelings are depicted by an extended metaphor of the house as a hostile and dangerous setting. For instance, Plath depicts herself as “a miner” using a candle described as “waxy stalactites” to traverse through the house which has been transformed into an “Old cave of calcium / Icicles old echoer.” The sibilance in this line reflects the cave’s sinister quality which in turn is amplified by the assonance in “panes of ice / A vice of knives”. Additionally, Plath’s metaphorical setting is also polysemic. The cave is personified as an “earthen womb”. This could represent Plath’s own womb, now empty after the birth of her second child Nicholas. As such, the threatening tone of the poem’s first half could symbolise her postnatal depression. However, the tone of the poem is ambivalent, it shifts and begins to offer a sense of hope. This is conveyed through the poem’s colour motif, which in the first half is dark and cold as “the light burns blue”. It is as though the setting has been starved of oxygen like Plath’s own lifeless womb. Yet, when she enters Nick’s room, the candle’s “yellows hearten” and the imagery becomes richer, more welcoming and positive with “ruby, roses, stars”. We see here how the presence of the child has brought new light into Plath’s despairingly empty and dark world. This impression is increased by Plath’s use of religious references; her son is portrayed as a religious saviour when she states, “You are the baby in the barn”. Consequently, Plath appears to selfishly rely on her innocent child, elevating him to the status of a religious icon, in order to save her from her own depression.