Superman and Paula Brown's New Snowsuit

 Superman and Paula Brown's New Snowsuit by Sylvia Plath is a story about a young girl who leaves the innocence of childhood and is confronted by the ugly reality that life is unfair and cruel. Initially, the narrator lives a happy carefree life, and although she is aware that there is a war raging, it has little impact on her. Superman largely represents her childhood years- he is like the figure who protects her from the cruelty of the world and teaches her to be carefree in her dreams (and in her mind he also bears a large resemblance to her Uncle Frank). I think that the moment in time in which the narrator becomes more aware of reality is when she is watching the war film at Paula Brown's birthday party. She says herself, 'our war games and the radio programmes were all made up, but this was real, this really happened' (lines 91-92). When the narrator runs from the theatre to vomit up the cake and the ice cream, this could be seen as the moment when she truly lost her previous childhood innocence, the food being representative of this. From this point on in the story, the narrator doesn't see things quite the same, and her imagination is weakened. She is haunted by the film, and 'no crusading blue figure came roaring down in heavenly anger to smash the yellow men who invaded [her] dreams' (lines 103-105). Superman was gone. The exuberant colors which filled her life before we're no longer present, and everything was bleak and dull. The destruction of Paula Brown's snowsuit reinforced the truth of this new reality. I think that the end part of the story when her family questions her about what had caused Paula to fall is significant, particularly as it was not only her mother who did not believe her but also Uncle Frank, who previously had been her Superman figure, protecting her from the harsh reality of the world.