Life to Plath is like a never ending torture. She pictures herself as a “thirty-year old cargo boat” which “stubbornly (hangs) on to (her) name and address”. This long journey of life has “swabbed (her) clear of (her) loving associations” and is exhausting her, wearing her out. The imagery of the “old cargo boat” suggests that she has gone through a lot of problems and has to continue to even if her body cannot withstand it. She sees life as a very tough journey with continuous great storms and it can only be ended when the boat is broken, sunken, or when she dies.
Plath feels that life is meaningless, because even her family’s presence brings her pain. She is “sick of baggage”, the baggage of “name”, “history” and “family”. Her “husband and child smiling out of the photo” but the sweet smiles to her are like “hooks” that “catch onto (her) skin”. This sweet painful imagery is reminding her of the miscarriage and the other things she has committed which was kindly forgotten by her family. Her life has no meanings; everything is pain to her, which is why she desires death, since to her, it is the only way to get out of this pain and obtain eternal peacefulness.
Although Plath is physically alive, she is mentally dead. In both poems The Stones and Tulips, she described herself as “a pebble”, a non-living object. Even though her “rust-red engine” is still running, she has already become a “flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow” or “nobody”. The imagery of the pebble suggests that it will be very hard to cure, to heal her since she is “dead” or was never alive. But the pebble imagery can also be saying that the anesthetist”, “surgeons and “nurses” are refining her, polishing her into a more round and smooth, changing her to a more adorable person. She illustrates that there is never clear boundaries between things, even things that look so obvious, like life and death.
Plath feels that she is tiny compared to this world. In The Stones, she uses metaphor to expand the hospital into a “city” and her surgery table as “a great anvil”. These large imageries suggest that she feels not worth of mentioning since she is so small. Life here can be described as meaningless, since there are so many, even if one disappeared, no one would notice, because the world is so big and full of other energetic lives.
Plath never felt that she could be healed when she is in the hospital. At the end of the poem The Stones, Plath says “my mendings itch” and “I should be good as new”. Her mendings are itching means she is healing, but the cliché at the end gives it a different meaning. Her sarcastic tone of the last phrase suggests that she feels that she would never be healed, and any attempts made to heal her will be futile. She has already given up living and the thought that she would ever be “healed”. Death to her is more desirable than life, as she would never be and doesn’t want to be perfect or “new”.
Plath’s life doesn’t belong to her, for everything is done for her and doesn’t even know what she is suppose to do. She is “drunk as a fetus”, from ingestion, “food tubes embrace me”, to hygiene, “sponges kiss my lichens away”. She again describes herself as a rock, for lichens only live on non-living objects. Even though these imagery are very gentle and positive, the forlornness and loneliness within can never be neglected, and the sense that she does not belong or have any connections with these actions emphasizes that she is doesn’t feel like she is part of this world or she is mentally dead.
Plath thinks she still has the chance of recovery even though it seems very far and very hard to obtain. Referring back to the metaphor of the cargo boat “the water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea”, she ends Tulips with “and comes from a country far away as health”. She still can “taste” means she is still living, the imagery of the “sea” means that she is quite lost in a vast area for now, but there are millions of courses she can choose from, and soon one day, she will touch the land “health”. This suggests that she still wants to recover and that she is just lost in the area between life and death, but will soon be back to the life side again.
Both the poems Tulips and The Stones contain the message that she prefers death over life. Plath’s poems are depressing, but her experiences can act as a memento for us, so we can strike a better balance between the views on life and death and make a better decision on things without hurting the people around us.