Introduction: “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath
“Tulips” by Sylvia Plath, first appeared in her 1965 posthumous collection, Ariel, is known for its striking use of imagery and emotional intensity, explores themes of identity, isolation, and the tension between life and death. Set in the sterile environment of a hospital, the speaker reflects on the quiet comfort of being detached from worldly concerns, symbolized by the clean whiteness of the hospital surroundings. The tulips, however, represent a vibrant, intrusive force of life that disrupts this serene detachment, drawing the speaker back into the emotional chaos of existence. Through sharp contrasts in color and emotion, Plath crafts a deeply personal meditation on the struggle between the desire for escape and the inevitable pull of life’s demands.
Text: “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
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.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.
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.
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.
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, they bring me sleep.
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.
I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat
stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
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.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.
I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
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.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.
The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
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.
Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
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.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.
Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.
The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
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.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.
Annotations: “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath
| Stanza | Annotations | Literary Devices | Poetic Devices | Structural & Rhetorical Devices |
| 1st Stanza | The speaker expresses discontent with the tulips, contrasting their excitement with the cold, white, and peaceful hospital. Metaphor of winter suggests death or stillness. The speaker wishes to dissociate from identity and the chaos of life. | Metaphor, Imagery | Metaphor, Imagery | Contrast, Symbolism |
| 2nd Stanza | The speaker’s head is metaphorically likened to an ‘eye,’ suggesting an all-seeing consciousness despite the desire to withdraw. The repetition of nurses as indistinguishable figures symbolizes detachment. | Simile, Alliteration | Simile, Alliteration | Repetition, Symbolism |
| 3rd Stanza | The speaker describes herself as a pebble being smoothed by the nurses, using water metaphor to emphasize detachment from her body. The numbness symbolizes disconnection from the emotional weight of life. | Metaphor, Simile | Metaphor, Simile | Repetition, Symbolism |
| 4th Stanza | The speaker highlights a loss of identity, associating herself with a ‘cargo boat,’ describing the process of losing personal associations. The metaphor of sinking deepens the sense of surrender. | Metaphor, Imagery | Metaphor, Imagery | Symbolism, Metaphor |
| 5th Stanza | The speaker desires freedom through emptiness and likens it to death, using religious imagery. The peacefulness is overwhelming, and compares it to Communion, implying a spiritual connection to void and stillness. | Metaphor, Imagery | Metaphor, Imagery | Religious Imagery, Symbolism |
| 6th Stanza | The tulips become threatening, symbolizing vitality that contrasts the speaker’s desire for peace. The redness and breathing of the tulips emphasize their forceful, life-affirming presence. | Personification, Metaphor | Personification, Metaphor | Contrast, Symbolism |
| 7th Stanza | The tulips now symbolize an intrusion on the speaker’s isolation, forcing her to confront life. The contrast between light and shadow suggests her desire for oblivion, and the sense of being watched reflects her struggle with identity. | Metaphor, Imagery | Metaphor, Imagery | Symbolism, Contrast |
| 8th Stanza | The speaker feels suffocated by the tulips, comparing them to dangerous animals. Her growing awareness of her own heartbeat implies a reconnection to life, despite her desire for escape. | Simile, Metaphor | Simile, Metaphor | Simile, Symbolism |
Literary And Poetic Devices: “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath
| Device | Explanation |
| Alliteration | The repetition of initial consonant sounds in nearby words, creating rhythm or emphasis, e.g., “white walls” enhances the cold, sterile environment of the hospital. |
| Allusion | A brief reference to a person, place, or event, often drawn from literature, history, or religion. The speaker alludes to “Communion” as a symbol of spiritual emptiness. |
| Anaphora | The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or lines, used to create emphasis or rhythm, e.g., “They bring me numbness… they bring me sleep.” |
| Assonance | The repetition of vowel sounds within nearby words to create internal rhyming, e.g., “red lead sinkers” where the short “e” sound emphasizes heaviness. |
| Contrast | The juxtaposition of opposing ideas, e.g., between the peacefulness of the hospital and the vitality of the tulips, which represent chaos and life. |
| Enjambment | The continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line or stanza, creating a sense of flow and urgency, e.g., many lines in Tulips run into the next. |
| Extended Metaphor | A metaphor that continues over multiple lines or stanzas, e.g., the tulips as symbols of life and chaos are elaborated throughout the poem. |
| Hyperbole | Exaggeration used for emphasis, e.g., “I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself” to stress the speaker’s desire for erasure. |
| Imagery | Vivid descriptions that appeal to the senses, e.g., “the tulips are too red,” creates a strong visual image of the flowers’ overwhelming presence. |
| Irony | A contrast between expectation and reality, e.g., the hospital, typically a place of healing, becomes a place of emotional detachment for the speaker. |
| Metaphor | A direct comparison between two unrelated things, e.g., the speaker’s body is described as a “pebble,” emphasizing her feelings of being smoothed and erased. |
| Onomatopoeia | A word that phonetically mimics the sound it describes, e.g., the use of “snags” in describing how the air moves around the tulips reflects their disruptive force. |
| Paradox | A seemingly self-contradictory statement that reveals a deeper truth, e.g., “I have never been so pure,” where the speaker expresses purity through detachment from life. |
| Personification | Attributing human characteristics to non-human objects, e.g., the tulips are described as “breathing,” giving them life-like qualities. |
| Repetition | The repeated use of words or phrases for emphasis or rhythm, e.g., “I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions” stresses the speaker’s detachment. |
| Simile | A comparison using “like” or “as,” e.g., “the tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals” compares the threatening tulips to wild animals. |
| Symbolism | The use of objects to represent larger ideas, e.g., tulips symbolize the intrusive vitality and emotional chaos the speaker seeks to escape. |
| Synecdoche | A figure of speech where a part represents the whole, e.g., “hands” representing the entire body as she lies in the hospital bed. |
| Tone | The attitude of the speaker conveyed through word choice, e.g., the tone of Tulips shifts between peaceful resignation and frustration with the intrusive tulips. |
| Visual Imagery | The use of descriptive language to create vivid pictures in the reader’s mind, e.g., the “white walls” and “red tulips” paint a clear image of the setting. |
Themes: “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath
- Identity and Self-Effacement: In Tulips, the speaker grapples with a profound desire to lose her sense of self, seeking an escape from the burdens of identity. She relinquishes her personal history and individuality to the medical staff: “I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses / And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.” This detachment from her identity intensifies as she metaphorically becomes an object, a “pebble” in the hands of the hospital staff. The speaker longs for complete erasure, stating, “I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself,” revealing a deep yearning for obliteration of the self.
- Life and Death: The tension between life and death is a central theme in Tulips. The hospital, with its whiteness and sterile calm, symbolizes a liminal space between these two realms. The speaker feels a sense of peacefulness in this near-death experience, describing the hospital setting as “quiet” and “snowed-in,” which contrasts with the vitality of the tulips: “The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.” The tulips, vibrant and full of life, act as a reminder of the world and her existence, even as she wishes to embrace the calm associated with death. The poem reflects this battle, with the tulips representing an intrusive force pulling her back into life.
- Isolation and Alienation: Throughout the poem, the speaker feels isolated and alienated, both physically and emotionally. Her environment in the hospital is portrayed as sterile and detached, which parallels her feelings of separation from the world. “I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions,” she declares, signaling her disconnection from the chaos of life. The nurses, while present, are described as distant and indistinguishable: “They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, / Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another.” The speaker’s alienation extends to her relationships, as she imagines herself “swabbed clear” of her loved ones and past associations, enhancing her sense of solitude.
- Emotional Turmoil and Intrusion: The tulips, with their vivid red color, symbolize an emotional force that intrudes upon the speaker’s desire for peace and detachment. While the speaker longs for emptiness and the quietude of the hospital room, the tulips disrupt this calm: “The tulips are too red… they correspond to my wound.” Their vibrant presence is invasive, drawing her back into a state of emotional turbulence. The tulips are depicted as breathing, “lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby,” signifying life that is overwhelming and unwanted. This emotional disturbance is further highlighted when the speaker feels suffocated by their presence: “The vivid tulips eat my oxygen,” suggesting that the flowers, and by extension life itself, are intruding on her fragile calm.
Literary Theories and “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath
| Literary Theory | Explanation | References from the Poem |
| Psychoanalytic Theory | This theory, rooted in Freud’s concepts, explores the speaker’s internal psychological state, focusing on her desire for detachment and self-effacement as a reflection of her unconscious mind’s struggle with trauma, identity, and death. | The speaker’s desire to erase her identity is evident in, “I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions,” reflecting her inner conflict and wish for oblivion. |
| Feminist Literary Criticism | This theory examines how the poem reflects the societal pressures on women regarding their roles and identity. The speaker’s experience in the hospital can be interpreted as a commentary on women’s loss of autonomy in patriarchal structures. | The speaker’s relinquishing of control over her body to the medical staff—“I have given my name… my body to surgeons”—suggests a loss of personal agency. |
| Existentialism | This theory explores themes of existence, meaning, and death. The speaker’s struggle with life and death, her quest for peace, and her confrontation with the intrusive tulips reflect existential concerns about the meaning of life and freedom. | “How free it is, you have no idea how free— / The peacefulness is so big it dazes you” highlights the existential desire for freedom from life’s burdens. |
Critical Questions about “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath
- How does the poem reflect the speaker’s relationship with life and death?
In “Tulips,” the speaker navigates a complex relationship with life and death, reflecting a desire for peace that seems akin to death, while being pulled back into life by the vibrant presence of the tulips. The hospital setting, with its “white walls” and the quietness of winter, evokes a serene detachment from the world, suggesting the speaker is in a liminal space between life and death. The speaker experiences a desire for the “peacefulness” that is “so big it dazes you,” which she associates with freedom from the demands of life. However, the tulips, described as “too red” and “hurt me,” intrude on this desired peacefulness, symbolizing the vitality and emotional intensity of life. This tension between surrendering to death and being dragged back to life by external forces raises critical questions about how Plath portrays life as both chaotic and inescapable, while death offers an alluring, peaceful alternative. - What role do the tulips play as symbols in the poem, and how do they affect the speaker?
The tulips in “Tulips” serve as potent symbols of life, vitality, and emotional complexity, disrupting the speaker’s desire for solitude and detachment. Throughout the poem, the tulips contrast with the hospital’s sterile whiteness, representing the colorful, chaotic nature of life. The speaker remarks, “The tulips are too red… they hurt me,” highlighting the discomfort and emotional disturbance they cause. Their “red lead sinkers” imagery suggests that the tulips weigh her down, making her hyper-aware of her connection to life, despite her desire to withdraw. The tulips act as intruders in her quest for emptiness, serving as a metaphor for the inescapable aspects of human existence—emotions, relationships, and the ties that bind her to the world. This critical question explores how the tulips act as both literal and metaphorical forces that compel the speaker to confront life, even when she seeks to evade it. - How does the speaker’s detachment from her identity manifest throughout the poem?
In “Tulips,” the speaker expresses a strong sense of detachment from her own identity, as she surrenders her personal history and individuality to the medical staff. Early in the poem, she states, “I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses / And my history to the anesthetist,” signaling a relinquishment of her former self. This act of surrender extends to her family, represented by a photograph of her husband and child, which she views with alienation: “Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.” The metaphorical comparison of herself to a “pebble” further emphasizes her dissociation from her identity, as she views her body as an object tended by the nurses. The speaker’s desire to erase herself—”I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself”—illustrates a deep yearning to escape from the burdens of personal identity, raising critical questions about how the poem portrays the speaker’s emotional and psychological withdrawal from her sense of self. - In what ways does the poem explore themes of isolation and alienation?
“Tulips” vividly depicts the speaker’s profound sense of isolation and alienation, both physically and emotionally. The hospital setting, with its “white walls” and sterile environment, creates a backdrop of solitude, which the speaker initially embraces as a form of peaceful escape. The speaker experiences alienation not only from the world but also from her own body and personal relationships. She refers to her body as “a pebble” that is merely tended by the nurses, likening their care to water smoothing over a stone, which emphasizes her detachment. Moreover, the repeated imagery of the nurses passing “like gulls” enhances the sense of impersonality and disconnection from the human interactions around her. Her alienation extends to her family, as she observes their photograph with indifference, feeling distanced from her loved ones. This critical question invites an exploration of how Plath uses the hospital setting and the speaker’s internal state to illustrate the broader theme of alienation from both the external world and personal identity.
Literary Works Similar to “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath
- “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath: Similar in its exploration of death, resurrection, and the complex relationship between life and suffering, this poem mirrors the tension between life and death present in “Tulips.”
- “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot: This poem shares “Tulips”‘s themes of emotional fragmentation and the disintegration of identity, presenting a similar struggle with existence and personal crisis.
- “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot: Eliot’s depiction of alienation and the speaker’s internal turmoil in this poem parallels the isolation and self-effacement present in “Tulips.”
- “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas: Both poems engage with themes of life and death, with Thomas’s work encouraging defiance against death, while “Tulips” wrestles with a desire for peace through detachment.
- “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath: This poem shares “Tulips”‘s emotional intensity and use of personal trauma to explore themes of death, identity, and familial relationships.
Representative Quotations of “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath
| Quotation | Context | Theoretical Perspective |
| “The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.” | The poem opens by contrasting the quiet, cold, and still hospital environment with the vibrancy and liveliness of the tulips. | Psychoanalytic Theory – The tulips symbolize life and emotional intensity, conflicting with the speaker’s desire for peace and death. |
| “I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly.” | The speaker tries to embrace the calm of the hospital room, seeking solitude and detachment from external life. | Existentialism – Highlights the speaker’s quest for isolation and peace, aligning with existential themes of freedom and detachment. |
| “I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.” | The speaker expresses a desire to disconnect from life and its disturbances, feeling insignificant and detached. | Psychoanalytic Theory – Reflects the speaker’s dissociation from her identity as a defense against psychological turmoil. |
| “They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff / Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.” | The speaker feels trapped in the hospital bed, constantly observed, as her detachment from self becomes physical. | Feminist Criticism – A critique of the objectification and depersonalization of the female body in institutional settings. |
| “My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water / Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.” | The speaker likens her body to an object, cared for by nurses, implying a sense of passivity and lack of control. | Postmodernism – The metaphor of the pebble reflects a fragmented sense of identity and the speaker’s reduction to a passive object. |
| “I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses.” | The speaker has relinquished her personal identity, becoming another nameless, faceless patient. | Feminist Criticism – The speaker’s surrender of personal identity reflects societal expectations of women’s self-sacrifice. |
| “Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.” | The speaker feels emotionally trapped by the familial relationships represented in the photograph of her husband and child. | Psychoanalytic Theory – Symbolizes the unconscious burden of familial expectations, linking emotional entrapment to deeper trauma. |
| “How free it is, you have no idea how free—— / The peacefulness is so big it dazes you.” | The speaker describes the hospital’s peacefulness as overwhelming, a freedom from the pressures of life. | Existentialism – The speaker’s description of freedom aligns with existential ideas of escape from life’s burdens and responsibilities. |
| “The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.” | The vividness of the tulips becomes unbearable for the speaker, symbolizing the painful intrusion of life into her peace. | Psychoanalytic Theory – The tulips represent the external pressures and emotional intensity the speaker is trying to escape. |
| “The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.” | The speaker feels suffocated by the presence of the tulips, linking them to life and vitality, which she resists. | Existentialism – The tulips, representing life, threaten the speaker’s existential desire for detachment and tranquility. |
Suggested Readings: “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath
- Ferretter, Luke. “Plath’s Poetry and Fiction.” Sylvia Plath’s Fiction: A Critical Study, Edinburgh University Press, 2010, pp. 58–89. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1r25c0.7. Accessed 21 Oct. 2024.
- Jane Reece. “Conversation with Sylvia in Colour.” International Review of Qualitative Research, vol. 1, no. 4, 2009, pp. 569–81. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/irqr.2009.1.4.569. Accessed 21 Oct. 2024.
- Rosenblatt, Jon. “Sylvia Plath: The Drama of Initiation.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 25, no. 1, 1979, pp. 21–36. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/441398. Accessed 21 Oct. 2024.
- Oberg, Arthur K. “Sylvia Plath and the New Decadence.” Chicago Review, vol. 20, no. 1, 1968, pp. 66–73. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/25294164. Accessed 21 Oct. 2024.
- Constance Scheerer. “The Deathly Paradise of Sylvia Plath.” The Antioch Review, vol. 34, no. 4, 1976, pp. 469–80. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4637827. Accessed 21 Oct. 2024.