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.
Sylvia Plath’s ‘Tulips’ and the Desire to Be Left Alone
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. The setting is also used to show this as well. What attracts her to the sterility of the hospital room is that it allows her to ignore the complications and pains of living. How free it is, you have no idea how free ----The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons. I thought to highlight those rhymes, those repetitions, that alliteration, but I shall not. Tulips Sylvia Plath The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. She wrote some of the most timeless poetry and prose in modern history in her relatively short life.
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. Tulips put into words all the feelings I could not say—portraying the real life of one women, and in doing so, revealing a part of us all. Pamela Annas bases her argument around the organization of stanzas. 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. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
Nobody watched me before; now I am watched. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. The feelings suggested by her description of the room are hibernation, dormancy, and detachment. However, to the speaker, the poppies do not signify merriment and glee. 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. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage —— My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. .
Sylvia Plath Tulips — Poetry Letters by Huck Gutman
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. The color also speaks subtly to the color of her wound. To a young Lizabeth , the marigolds symbolise beauty in a place that it doesn't belong. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuffLike an eye between two white lids that will not shut. The speaker is in a hospital bed and describes her experience using an image of red I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
It was to vote him out of office, which thankfully we as American voters did, if only barely: 75 million voters to 70 million who wanted a continuation for Trump. She considers herself inconsequential, utterly removed from loud, explosive things. Most critics seem to agree that she chooses the latter. To an adult Lizabeth these flowers hold a different meaning, they now represent hope to her. 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. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,And comes from a country far away as health. You have to get past it. I feel again the chaotic emotions of adolescence,illusions as smoke, yet as real as the potted geranium before me now. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. I am a nun now; I have never been so pure. 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. We are given, through metaphor, images for the inner life of the poet lying in that hospital bed.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage —- My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. But as time passed, I taught her less and then not at all. She used to be alone in the room, but now the tulips share her space, watching her and eating up the oxygen. A second thing which recommends this poem, as opposed to others which — I hasten to add — are just as great, is that it balances two forces.
I do not know. Composed after a stint in hospital recovering from an appendectomy, the poem finds Plath lying in an all-white room as she considers a bouquet of tulips next to her: The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. They concentrate my attention that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. It is what Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. A pompous, arrogant boor who saw women as toys and objects and whose only true love was his own enormous ego? I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. In the interest of historical specificity, we know that she was hospitalized for an appendectomy. I didn't want any flowers, I only wantedTo lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. So, had Donald Trump won and been re-elected, would I have sent this out? 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.
