Sylvia Plath's poem "Tulips" is a vivid and poignant depiction of the speaker's experience with physical and emotional pain. The speaker is hospitalized and lying in a bed, surrounded by the sterile and impersonal environment of a hospital room. The tulips, with their bright and beautiful blooms, serve as a contrast to the speaker's own internal turmoil and suffering.
Throughout the poem, the speaker grapples with the disconnection between the vibrant world of the tulips and her own numb and disconnected state. The speaker describes the tulips as "red as fire" and "glowing" with life, while she herself is "swaddled" and "peeled" like a newborn, unable to move or speak. The tulips represent the vitality and beauty of life that the speaker feels she has lost.
As the poem progresses, the speaker becomes increasingly obsessed with the tulips, fixating on their presence as a symbol of her own lack of agency and control over her own body and emotions. The tulips become a metaphor for the speaker's own life, as she is unable to fully experience or engage with the world around her due to her illness and pain.
Ultimately, "Tulips" is a powerful exploration of the ways in which physical pain can impact a person's emotional and psychological well-being. The speaker's obsession with the tulips serves as a reflection of her own feelings of powerlessness and disconnection from the world. Through her vivid and evocative language, Plath beautifully captures the experience of suffering and the longing for connection and vitality.
Tulips Poem Summary and Analysis
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The writer talks about the disturbing terms she shares with her father. I thought to highlight those rhymes, those repetitions, that alliteration, but I shall not. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. In other words, she treasures the whiteness and sterility because they allow her an existence devoid of any self, in which she is defined by no more than the feeling she has at any particular moment. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
Sylvia Plathās āTulipsā and the Desire to Be Left Alone
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their colour, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Pamela Annas bases her argument around the organization of stanzas. Eileen Aird remarks: "The world of Ariel is a black and white one into which red, which represents blood, the heart and living is always an intrusion. I have wanted to efface myself. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,And comes from a country far away as health.
Because of her illness and her sense of selflessness, she does not need the "baggage" that her life had before surgery: she does not need her black suitcase, or her husband and child that she sees in a family photo. The tulips thrust themselves in front of her with all of the brazenness of life. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. In the midst of composing Ariel, Plath sensed that she was creating something special. Let me comment here that part of what makes the poem so powerful is its use of metaphorical imagery. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.
It is what Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. In other words, the verb tenses and tone suggest the speaker is slowly accepting her decision through the poem, rather than actively making the choice. These flowers hold a different meaning to Miss Lottie, to her they represented what was left of love, hope, and beauty in her life. The analysis of her most famous poems is detailed below.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. Plath the speaker surrenders to the nothingness which is offered. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. I feel again the chaotic emotions of adolescence,illusions as smoke, yet as real as the potted geranium before me now. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. Figurative Language In My Papa's Waltz 588 Words 3 Pages He does this to not bombard the reader with a dark abusive poem. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. Plath uses the imagery of tulips, which is constantly repeated throughout the poem as a symbol of isolation.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Plath contrasts the whiteness and sterility of the hospital room with the liveliness of the tulips. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. We might call them, following Freud, Eros and Thanatos, love and death. . In some sense, the poem states at its opening what it is about, and then revisits it in greater detail.
Sylvia Plath: Poems āTulipsā Summary and Analysis
Sylvia Plath produced this fantastic poem during the trying time of her life. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They not only watch her, but also insist that she watch them. The speaker accentuates how disconnected she feels from the world, however she seems to embrace her isolation; it is something that she would prefer to clutch onto. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. Her heart opens and closes on its own, keeping her alive because it loves her.
I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boatStubbornly hanging on to my name and address. The meaning of innocence lost and people growing up being changed by the harshness of reality. Sylvia Plath wrote "Tulips" in March of 1961, after having her appendix removed and receiving get-well flowers from a friend. She is like a "cargo boat" that holds onto her name and address only, and has lost all other "associations" in life. The spell of the hospital room is broken.
I am a nun now; I have never been so pure. Tulips Sylvia Plath The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. It is safe to assume that without them, she would have remained ensconced in her bed, enjoying her lifelessness. In other words, she treasures the whiteness and sterility because they allow her an existence devoid of any self, in which she is defined by no more than the feeling she has at any particular moment.
