ABSTRACT
Nicholas Hughes had a nightmare start in life. His mother, Sylvia Plath, had a history of fighting her own inner demons that must have made it especially difficult for her to be there in her mind for her two children, Frieda and Nicholas — born a year apart. Children whose parents have committed suicide — at no matter what age — tend to feel not only responsible for their parents’ depression and ultimate suicide, but also profoundly rejected by them. Nicholas Hughes did not marry and had no children. Although Nicholas struggled with depression for much of his life, he does not seem to have inherited Plath’s manic depression, instead suffering from his own psychological conflicts relating to the circumstances of his life. However, there may be an important clue to the timing of his suicide in a poem that Sylvia Plath wrote about him shortly before her own suicide.
