Superman and Paula Brown's New Snowsuit

In Sylvia Plath's semi-autobiographical story 'Superman and Paula Brown's New Snowsuit', the narrator moves from being an innocent child with a wild imagination to a child who has been awoken to the real world of adulthood. Plath uses metaphors and strongly descriptive language to create mood in the world the narrator lives in. In the beginning, the bright, sparkling lights of the airport outside the narrator's bedroom set the scene for the place where she revels in her "technicolor dreams" of flying with Superman. This is later contrasted with the darkness of the hallway outside her bedroom after the evening of Paula Brown's ruined snowsuit, which is when "the silver airplanes and the blue capes all [dissolve] and [vanish]".

The transition from child to adult begins when the narrator sees a graphic war film when she goes to the movies for Paula Brown's party. The movie makes her feel so sick that she "[vomits] up the cake and ice cream." Such an act gives the impression that she is throwing up a bit of her childhood. However, the event seems to finally drain the colour from the narrator's world is the afternoon when Paula Brown's new snowsuit is ruined. The other children turn on the narrator and blame her when Paula falls in a puddle of oil slick, covering her snowsuit in oil. She runs home looking for comfort but her mother and her Uncle Frank, who she imagines to be the Superman of her fantasy world in the beginning of the story, don't believe her. The feeling of being ostracised for something she didn't do and then having the people she loves not trust her causes the narrator to feel as though her world has gone dark.