Tulips Flashcards
Summary 1
Summary 2
Final Summary 3
First Analysis
Second Analysis
Third Analysis
Final Analysis
Line
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.
- # Plath is not happy about these tulips.
- Tulips are oftentimes the first sign of spring, which is an apt explanation concerning why they don’t belong here.
- Flowers, what are you doing, it’s winter, die already.
- It might not be necessarily winter. “Winter,” “white” and “snowed-in” might only be metaphors for the white, confined hospital setting. This is relevant, because the tulips might be appropriate to the setting but not to the speaker.
- Winter here – white everything – quiet – snowed in.
Plath is layering on the imagery of whites and associating the color with a meaning very deliberately.
White battles Red in Tulips.
Line
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
- You normally are ‘peaceful’ with your whole body and jump into it. This represents the two fighting forces of red (excitement) and white (purity).
She is learning to control the side of her which is innately full of violent thoughts and consumed with the ‘explosions’ of ideas. She wishes to get away from her mind through learning how to be peaceful. - Rather than the light shining on the walls, the light is lying, just the way she is. Plath may feel as though the light is heavy, and perhaps she is even melting in to it.
She is also expressing a detached behavior: THESE hands, THIS bed; rather than my hands and my bed. Perhaps because she is nobody, as she explains in the next line.
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Line
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
- And she is calmer thinking she is nobody. She doesn’t want the pressure of trying to be a great writer. She doesn’t want to write anything now. But the tulips are the kind of object that might inspire a poem – they are a reminder of her ambitions.
- Random, beautiful, and perhaps (probably) a comment on Plath’s own perception of her poetry, as well as critical reception.
Plath’s journals and letters reveal she was very self-conscious about the dangers of making her poems too melodramatic or too confined to structure; unlike most people, she was aware of her flaws as an artist and struggled to correct them.
Plath is usually a very loud poet – meaning she is very clear about her topics or vivid with extreme imagery. In “Tulips,” the style is very calm and NOT excited or rapid-fire.
She has nothing to do with explosions here.
Here’s a rare sexy picture of Plath, to contrast with the normal pictures:
- It has been suggested that embracing “peacefulness” and rejecting “explosions” are positive sentiments. They supposedly represent a calming of her psyche, or maybe an effort to write more well balanced poetry. This line, however, and the lines that follow, begin a trend that counters those ideas. She gives up her “name” and “day-clothes,” suggesting that she is losing her individuality and her way of life. “Anesthetists” and “surgeons” take away her “history” and “body,” suggesting a loss of the past that has molded and formed her identity.
Line
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.
- Anesthesia offers another image of whiteness, if a bit obliquely – anesthesia has frequently been the result of substances called milk –
Milk of the poppy – opium to modern day Propofol, which is what Michael Jackson overdosed on.
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Line
They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
- This suggests extreme passiveness, as if her head is unable to support itself. It is done to her, she seems unable to lift her own head.
- The “two white lids” are, figuratively, the pillow and the sheet-cuff; a powerful metaphor of a helpless, constricted passivity.
Two other prominent possibilities are present: some have suggested this is a reference to Anthony Burgess’s grotesque “Ludovico Technique” in A Clockwork Orange, where the eyes are held open in order to force social conditioning. However, A Clockwork Orange was published in 1962, and “Tulips” – the first poem to feature Plath’s Ariel-voice – was written in 1961, making the reference implausible unless it was a late revision. (Furthermore, while Ariel was released in 1965, it was finished by February 1963, when Plath committed suicide).
Some have also pointed to Plath’s two children, but there isn’t any clear indication that this is the case.
- Pupil as in the obvious reference to her eye, but take it out of context and the line is:
“Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.”
A person so stupid that “it” (apparently doesn’t deserve a gender pronoun) and must learn everything to begin to function in society.
Plath went through electroshock therapy after her suicide attempt at about 20.
Electroshock therapy generally had the effect of wiping the brain clear of most of its memories temporarily, with everything slowly coming back. This poem may be referencing her experience with electroshock therapy, although it is set later, since she references Ted Hughes and one of her children, presumably Nicholas, the elder of her childern.
Line
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.
- The description of the nurses gives possible clues to what is happening to the speaker. She describes them in this way, “they are no trouble,” and later, “one just the same as another.” Like the cold, white atmosphere of the hospital, they don their “white caps,” which is similar to the later description of herself as a nun. She desires the peace and comfort of being like them, or rather, just like everyone else. She seems to willingly conform to their expectations, which could figuratively represent societal expectations. She freely gives in to the coercion of those around her, while she fights against her urges to embrace the “explosions” and “too red” convictions and passions of her true identity.
- More originality. Sylvia Plath and the Metaphysical poets have a lot in common, in terms of their inventive and unexpected imagery (known as ‘conceits’). The busy-ness of birds, constantly looking for food, constantly pecking, is apt; rather a delightful comparison.
There is a disturbing aspect of this metaphor though (or is it a simile, with ‘the way’ as a comparison?), in that she projects her negativity, sees the world as undifferentiated. Often in hospital the minor comings and goings become very significant as the outside world shrinks. People often say things like ‘I look forward to nurse x coming on duty’, or ‘nurse y works so hard’ or ‘nurse z makes me laugh’. Sylvia Plath hasn’t gone through this process; the individuality of the people caring for her is lost.
Line
My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, theybring me sleep.
- If said aloud these lines have a rhythmic, lapping effect, rather like the water they are describing.
- Again, the speaker is erasing her own humanity by comparing herself to an inanimate object. Though these few lines give us creepy images, Plath is showing us that there is also something peaceful about it.
Line
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.
- Both the physical overnight bag in the line below and the emotional baggage of family and connections weigh her down. Lost to herself, the weight of owning things and belonging to others is nauseating.
- Pillboxes aren’t typically black.
Therefore, the description of a black pillbox is ironic. (To further put this irony into perspective, try Googling black pill box in one tab and white pill box in another tab. A search for white pill box will return proportionally more little white containers for pills instead of the hats than a search for black pill box would for little black containers for pills instead of the hat. Even Google concedes the irony in this line.) This will be talked about momentarily.
In the previous line, the speaker says she’s sick of baggage. Two em dashes follow, and this means she intends to explain what her baggage is. This line is part of her explaining.
The baggage described in this line is a patent leather overnight case. The speaker might be tired of lugging it around from or to wherever she and the anesthetists, nurses, and surgeons are, but it probably has some figurative baggage to it. It might make her feel annoyed or disgusted because of whatever she associates with it.
The speaker says the overnight case is like a black pillbox. Because a black pillbox is ironic, perhaps it’s implied that the pills aren’t effective or aren’t medicinal. The overnight case is talked about as if it’s not necessarily conducive to the speaker’s health. Maybe it’s detrimental.
Black is traditionally a color worn at funerary events. Imagery like a black pillbox–along with all the imagery of winter–might be foreshadowing the speaker’s forthcoming death. Additionally, black is commonly associated with bereavement. In the next two lines, the speaker’s attention turns to her family. They might be deceased, or they might be profoundly absent from her life, but they’re baggage nonetheless. She could be bereaving the distance between them or the permanent loss of them. Consequently, she might despise this burden. (She is sick of baggage after all.)
- Here she is describing what she saw when she was put to sleep by the nurses for her surgery. Plath had two children (Nicholas and Frieda) and a husband, but smiling is in contrast to the reality of this family: after Plath committed suicide, her son Nicholas did the same about 20 years later because of depression – the same reason his mother committed suicide.
- Plath makes the smiles hooks because they draw her back to the real world and she just wants to be numb and unnoticed: pure.
