Plath makes out that she is meaningless and lifeless ‘my body is like a pebble to them’ she describes herself as an object, a cold stone which is worthless and means nothing to no one, something that isn’t alive.The contrast of personal pronouns in the third paragraph ‘they’ emphasises that she is passive as she is throughout the whole poem.
In the 5th stanza Plath tells us ‘I didn’t want any flowers’. She asserts her own rights and thoughts as we can tell as she uses the personal pronoun ‘I’ that she is not passive here.
In the 6th stanza Plath presents nature as something threatening ‘the tulips are too red’ ‘they hurt me’ she tells us how uncomfortable they make her feel and how they distress her. At the end of the 6th stanza she complains how she is being dragged back to reality, being reminded of her family and life’s presence, something she desperately does not want.
In the 7th stanza Plath uses personification to show the sense of threat she feels ‘now I am watched’. She describes the tulips as if they are watching her ‘the tulips turn to me’. Plath uses the adjective ‘flat’ and ‘ridiculous’ to describe her because she feels worthless because she has had a miscarriage she feels no good to anyone, like she has let herself down. Plath shows some irony at the end of this stanza ‘the vivid tulips eat my oxygen’ she describes the tulips as if they are killing her which is ironic because they threaten her, as she wants to be dead but the tulips represent life.
The first sentence of the 8th shows us that Plath feels a bitter sense of resentment for nature ‘tulips filled it up like a loud noise’. She describes the tulips as if they are always catching her ‘snags and eddies’ because they are constantly creating trauma and trouble and are a constant reminder of her commitments.
In the 8th stanza she feels the tulips are powerful ‘warming themselves’ like the tulips are a burning red fire, reflecting off the walls. In the second line we realise just how threatening she feels the tulips are. ‘being bars like dangerous animals’ and describes how she feels they are going to tear her apart ‘like the mouth of some great African cat’ as if the tulips are going to devour her. Describing her heart as ‘it opens and closes’ shows it reminds her of her heart and pulse, signifying that she is alive, which upsets her. Towards the end of the poem her words become very emotional ‘taste is warm and salt, like the sea’. She is crying, she knows she is not well mentally which gives a negative note for the end of the poem.
To conclude, the poem ‘Tulips’ shows us that Plath deals with nature in a negative way. She uses nature to express the sorrow that she feels. Constantly creating imagery using nature but in a negative way
by
peppapig011 (student)
