Sylvia Plath – TULIPS
Introduction :
The poem we are going to study today is Tulips. This poem was written by Sylvia Plath in 1960 and was first published in Ariel in 1965, two years after her death by suicide. It is structured as a nine-stanza, sixty-three line poem. This poem is set in a hospital and describes the point of view of a patient who is in recovery. The speaker uses different metaphors and similes to describe her environment which she founded very comforting, before the arrival of the tulips. She is caught between a desire to move towards absolute freedom and purity that lies in death symbolised by the hospital with its white walls, white caps, and the living world of colour represented by the vibrant tulips. What is most striking in this poem is that it is full of oppositions, and the poem itself seems to be cut in two: the white half and the red half, and this is why we decided to do a two-part commentary. In our first part we will discuss the white and cold haven, that is the hospital, and how nature imagery is here used as a positive image. We will also discuss the state of peacefulness and relaxation in which the speaker is in and how she compares herself to inanimate things or lifeless object. Our second part will talk about the change in the poem, that is to say the arrival of the tulips. Indeed, from the fifth stanza, the atmosphere changes completely, and the speaker seems oppressed by her environment.

1) The white haven
As we said before, the first part of the poem is a description of the hospital which is presented as a refuge, and it is opposed to the tulips on the very first line of the poem: “The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.” Besides; this is the only reference to the tulips until the fifth stanza. Indeed, the first four stanzas are dedicated to the description of the speaker’s calmness. The first image that poet used is winter. Traditionally, winter has a derogatory connotation and is often associated with death.