“Tulips” by Sylvia Plath explores the idea of disconnecting oneself from life, only to be reminded of their responsibilities in life. The speaker in the poem is in a hospital room, separate from their family. No one is present in the white hospital room, except for the speaker and the tulips. The room is peaceful and allows the speaker to enjoy a lack of commitment towards anything. Unfortunately for the speaker, the tulips in the room remind the speaker of their life and bind the speaker to their responsibilities. In Sylvia Plath’s “Tulips,” color symbolism and personification contrast the peace of disconnection and commitments in life.
Color symbolism of the white hospital room and the red tulips juxtapose the peacefulness of the
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The color symbolism of the white hospital room and the red tulips juxtapose the peacefulness of the hospital room with the speaker’s internal conflict regarding their responsibilities.
Personification of silence and tulips further emphasizes the speaker’s disconnection with worldly responsibilities with the chaos of life. The silence and peace of the hospital room is freeing to the speaker, as they are removed from their responsibilities. The hospital room is void of any distractions and “The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,/ And it asks nothing” (32,33). By the room asking nothing, its quietness does not demand anything and this is freeing for the speaker, as they are disconnected from their responsibilities. The tulips remind the speaker of their life and their mortality, as they observe the speaker. The speaker has been left alone in the room, but once the tulips arrive the speaker realizes that “Nobody watched [her] before, now [she is] watched./ The tulips turn to [her]” (43, 44). The speaker, alone in the room, is free from any connections to the outside world until the tulips from her family arrive. The tulips, staring at the speaker, remind them that they do have responsibilities outside of the peaceful room. The speaker, alone in the room, is free from any connections to the outside world until the tulips from there family arrive. The tulips
Hospitals are meant to help some people heal physically and others mentally. In the novel One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey published in 1962, readers are introduced to a mental hospital that has goals that do not align with helping people. Within the hospital, characters with varied personalities and opinions are intermixed with three main characters playing specific roles with supporting characters close by. With the characters’ motivations, themes develop such as the emasculation of the men in the hospital by an oppressive nurse. Symbols, such as laughter and the “combine”, are also pertinent to themes as the readers watch the men transitioning from being oppressed to being able to stand up for themselves causing change in hospital policy.
In the next stanza, the poet describes “A figure walking towards cloaked in blue/ Beeping/ Tubes/ Needles.” The poem addresses the routinely and monotonous aspect of being in the hospital for long periods of time. It is a critique of the biomedical model and how the hospital system is created where patients are tended to by multiple doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals. The patients and healthcare professionals are unable to form a relationship that consists of what Kleinman describes as “empathetic witnessing” (Kleinman). Therefore, detachment between patient and health workers is developed and established, to which the patient cannot recognize or know the people assisting them. In addition, Grealy discusses this in her earliest accounts and appointments with doctors. She states that there is a layer of “condescension” and is an “endemic in the medical
Another theme is maintaining your humanity. The oppression the Big Nurse wields over the patients, shrinks them down until they’re no longer human. “No. You were right. You remember, it was you that drew our attention to the place where the nurse was
To illustrate the mental institute, the narrator describes remembering “the trapdoor… and find the girl tied to a bed (Ellison 74).” Many medical facilities have a seclusion room where they isolate patients who are violent or self-destructive, with medical restraints, according to Gale Springer from the American Nurse Today. The girl tied to the bed symbolizes the use of medical restraints and “her clothing torn to rags (Ellison 74),” suggest that the girl was doing harm upon herself or to others. One may think the narrator’s comment on “everything was fixed (Ellison 75),” was about the constant visits to the “bingo hall” looking the same. In the perspective of a mental institute, an
To start off, there is a continuous symbolism in the short story which comes in the form of the Patient that the main character will wake up next to in the hospital. The reason why the Patient serves as a major symbol in the story is because every time the main character wakes up the Patient helps to calm him down. In the same way, if two people were kidnapped and one of the captives goes through a mental breakdown whereas the other is there and is trying to help the situation. For example when the main character is having a fit and it's the Patient saying "You're going to fall of the bed...old buddy." Cortazar may have created the Patient a symbolism of duty and trust, based on the real-life soldiers who trust each other till the very end. The Patient may
Joseph Rosenblum agrees with the most widely known interpretation of the colors of the rooms. In an essay about the symbolism in “The Masque of the Red Death,” he writes about the meaning behind the colors of the rooms. “blue is the dawning of life. Purple represents
Each one having its own unique design and finesse about it. All the rooms were beautiful colored with there own color theme for each. The window pains matched the decoration in all chambers, or did they. The chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers who venture.”Having black curtains and blood red glass panes. Due to the fact that this chamber matched did not match any of the others, which can be matched with an emotion for each, it most likely has a different meaning. The meaning of pain and suffering is the vibe that this chamber gives. The meaning of each chamber can also be related by the feeling of a person. Each room, whether happy, sad, angry, then the last on of course
One of the main symbols of death comes with the colours of each room in which the party was held. Each of the rooms described in this story represents a different phase of life, from infancy, leading up to death. From east to west, the rooms represent infancy/early childhood (blue), childhood (purple), adolescence (green), adulthood (orange), midlife crisis (white), golden age (violet), old age/death (black). In addition to each colour representing a different stage of life, it also correlates to the overarching mood or defining event that takes place in each stage, with blue being innocence, purple being creativity and exploration, green being growth, orange being independence and change, white being an inability to let go of childhood innocence/purity, violet being tranquility, and black being death. This colour symbolism proves to be applicable when considering that all the guests of Prince Prospero’s masque ran through the rooms quickly and died when they entered the final black room. When considering the symbolism of the room colours, it is clear that this action represents the revelers rushing through their life towards death,
Poetic techniques displayed through the ideas, poetic features and style of the poet, reveal concepts which transcend time and place. In Gwen Harwood’s poem “the violets” her ability to interweave past and present emphasises the importance of memory in preserving ones journey though the universal experiences of growth, maturity and mortality. Similarly the poem “Mother who gave me life” demonstrates the memory of motherhood as a timeless quintessential part of the human condition. And lastly In Harwood’s “father and Child”, the connection between the father and son/daughter highlights that transformation throughout childhood is inevitable. Through the content and the language, the ways in which human experiences reveal concepts which
The red room is the scene of the next occurrence of suffering but in a
Poe’s use of symbolism is very evident throughout the story of “The Masque of the Red Death”. Much has been made about the meaning of the rooms that fill Prince Prospero’s lavish getaway. One such critique, Brett Zimmerman writes, “It is difficult to believe that a symbolist such as Poe would refuse to assign significance to the hues in a tale otherwise loaded with symbolic and allegorical suggestiveness” (Zimmerman 60). Many agree that the seven rooms represent the seven stages of human existence. The first, blue, signifying the beginnings of life. Keeping in mind Poe’s Neo-Platonism and Transcendentalism stance, the significance of blue is taken a step further. Not only does blue symbolize the beginning of life, but the idea of immortality is apparent when considering these ideas. “Perhaps ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ then, is not quite the bleak existential vision we have long thought it to be”, expounds Zimmerman (Zimmerman 70). Poe’s use of each color is significant to the seven stages
In his short story, “The Chrysanthemums,” John Steinbeck’s use of symbolism throughout the story provides the development for the plot which demonstrates that women sometimes suffer from estrangement and solitude while in search for their identity. Steinbeck presents the main character, Elisa Allen, as a frustrated woman who is dissatisfied with her current lifestyle as she yearns for a more adventurous one, instead of living up to society’s expectations of a woman only being a simple housewife. To support the theme, the author uses the fence and the flowers in a symbolic technique to represent the feelings of loneliness and alienation to portray Elisa’s relationship with the outside world.
Sylvia’s Plath’s “Metaphors” is about a woman feeling insignificant during the midst of her pregnancy. Striking imagery is used to explore the narrator’s attitudes about having a child. Plath uses metaphors in every line, including the title itself, making the poem a collection of clues. The reader is teasingly challenged to figure out these clues, realising that the metaphors have
Poets, Judith Wright, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickenson all express their views on life and death, however, do so in varying manners. Through imagery, Wright and Plath both consider life’s beginnings, however, Wright considers it to be a beautiful gift, whereas Plath views birth as an empty burden. Subsequently, through structure Dickenson and Wright each acknowledge life, expressing how in some cases it is difficult, yet in other circumstances it is celebrated. Finally, through tone, Dickenson and Plath convey their views on death, yet differ in that Plath believes it is purifying and holds a sick fascination with it, while Dickenson instead holds a unique curiosity about it. Therefore, whilst each poet recognises the journey of birth,
Flashing red and blue lights accompanied by an alarming siren in the distance is signaled when the double doors of the emergency room burst open. Pushed by several nurses, doctors, and other medical staff, a lone hospital stretcher with a bloody, wounded patient flies through the medical center towards the doors to the operating room. This image is what generally comes to mind when you think about an emergency room. Many people believe that the hospital’s emergency room is a dark and scary place. While this is true, the common misconception is that the emergency room is a place clear of humor, when in reality humor is present, even necessary, for many reasons. Many television shows, like the show ER, are based in the setting of the