Footnotes

1. The repeated use of the word "I" by the speaker reveals something about the poem. This poem is very reminiscent of a personal journal. The speaker is simply stating what she sees and how she feels about herself and her surroundings. The speaker seems to be mourning for something that she will never have. Kendrick Daniel ▲
2. Typically, the color white resembles a sense of nothingness. When we think of white, we do not think of it as a "vibrant" color, or a color worth noting. However, in this case, Plath uses the color white as a color of peace for this woman. She is rather pleased to be surrounded by white and liking the feeling of being "snowed-in." It is intriguing to see Plath bring in color as seen in the red tulips. The point of the tulips are to cheer the woman up and add vivid color into the bland room. However, rather than accepting these tulips, the woman rejects them, claiming that the red tulips are "corresponding" to her wound." The red tulips are used to contrast the numbing white. Red signifies blood, or life, and this happens to be something the woman does not want. Could the woman be Plath, who we know as a suicidal and troubled woman? Hunter Berman ▲
3. White seems to represent an imagine of relaxing, peacefulness, and freedom. The winter, white everything, snowed-in, and white balls are distinct images that portray tranquility. When the writer says "I am nobody" it is sort of a sign of freedom and nothingness - no worries. This entire stanza talks about the tulips as a beautiful part of life contrasting the dark images in the rest of the poem. -Michael Solomon ▲
4. The setting of the poem is important to take note of; the speaker is lying in a hospital room while it is winter outside. The contrast of the tulips are sharp against the white bland outside. The inner feelings of the speaker almost begin to blend in with the colorless surroundings, so much so that they render her to feel like nothing; "I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions." (line 5). Throughout the poem the tulips help provide some beacon of excitement and color in her dreary state. ▲
5. It is interesting the peacefulness the speaker learns in completely giving herself up to the doctors. The white walls and the snow outside creates a sense of purity and blankness, like she is being reborn. She says she is nobody like is starting over. With all of these sterile and blank images the tulips interrupt it. She calls them "too excitable," which could mean their color is too bright and contrasting. It could also be symbolic of her unwillingness to accept sickness or sympathy as she is in the hospital. ▲
6. This stanza comes after we learn that the speaker has been injured and is lying in the hospital alone, sick and unable to move. We begin to wonder if the speaker wishes to be dead or wants to escape her life. Previously she spoke of her family and how she has hung on to life as an old boat does. But now all she wishes is to be "utterly empty" and free. We begin to wonder what her previous life contained and what hardships she may have endured before this, including her injury. She is drawn to the "peacefulness" that to her is simple and asks very little. It only wishes to know her name and be given a few trinkets. This is much easier than life may have been before for her. At the end of the stanza she understands why the dead draw in on this death and peace. It is because it is so simple and easy and peaceful. It is like the religious faith and hope of the communion that they have bitten down on in the past. It is their faith and hope clamping down onto the peace of the afterlife without worries or hardship. Zack Roward ▲
7. Throughout “Tulips,” Plath stresses the importance of color and uses color to further expand on her emotions, and her overall state of being. She begins the poem with, “Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in I am learning peacefulness.” It is in these lines that the peaceful, and pure, associations with the color white are made. Further into the poem she writes, “I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.” This feeling of pure is clearly associated with the white color of the walls in her hospital room. However in the following stanzas the red tulips greatly contrast the white color, and furthermore contrast the feelings and sense of peacefulness the color white and the hospital provide. She remarks that the tulips are too red and they hurt her, as they also remind her of her wound/injury. She even goes on to say that they were like “a dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.” Her focus on color and the range of emotions different colors can evoke really stand out in this poem. -Marcus Patterson ▲
8. There is something to be said for the vivid personification that goes on within this poem. Firstly, the tulips feel sympathy with her because they both share the color red (one can assume this is the author's blood). Then the tulips begin to breathe and "eat her oxygen." Then the walls begin to become personified as well, and it seems as if the whole room has come alive. The experience seems like one that someone would have after coming off a large dose of anesthetics or pain-killers, and the author is probably on both after her surgery. I also really enjoy her body being compared to a pebble in water, in which the surgeons tenderly touch and care for. To compare the delicateness of holding a nice, round, smooth pebble and a person's anesthetized body is something that really brings out an image of tenderness from the surgeons, and further emphasizes the author's detached nature from the world, as she begins sinking into feeling like a pebble, and then eventually into a pale nothingness, before waking up from the drugs. - Lance Hayden ▲
9. This poem is interesting in that we have numerous references to the speaker as "I" but we learn little about the individual. We do however get descriptions of all the things and actions around the speaker. Any description we receive of this person is presented as a comparison to and/or description of another object. For example, the first two-lines of the fourth stanza seem to reference Plath's miscarriage (if Plath is the speaker). The resentment felt towards the tulips simply because they are alive shows some complex feelings about death. We also learn that the red of the tulips (which is exaggerated by the large amount of whiteness) corresponds to a wound of the speaker. This lack of description is later explained in a desire to efface herself. - Jasmine Jenkins ▲
10. The use of a tulip as a symbol of Plath's pain is interesting because tulips are usually associated with beauty and serenity. In Plath's work, the tulips are associated with pain instead. Plath likens the "breath[ing]" of the flowers with the breathing of a child, causing her more pain because this breathing contrasts harshly with that of a miscarried child. The tulips remind Plath of her miscarriage. The "red" color of the tulips also reminds Plath of her wound, causing her even more anguish. Finally, Plath likens the movement of the tulips to the beating of her own heart. The image of a tulip is ultimately one of anguish to Plath. Diana Fridlyand ▲