Sylvia Plath’s Fig Tree Analogy
The analogy that altered my brain chemistry.
Sylvia Plath. Credits: Linkedin
How it affects people’s perception of the future ; including mine.
The fig tree quote in ‘The Bell Jar’ by Sylvia Plath is undefeatable and currently a hot topic in which the people of the society can’t stop bustle about. Sylvia defines the fig tree itself as branches of future goals that occurs in the cause of indecision. People have been surrounded all the time by the question “What do you want to be in the future?” or “What do you have in mind for your future goals?”. Why do we have to know what we want for the future in a very specific way, and why can’t people just understand that we have so many thoughts that all of them can’t just combine into one future goal? That we somehow have so much interests that it became complicated to describe them sequentially.
As I have grew older and older, these past years have been filled with many thoughts and undecided decisions that kept running through my mind. When I was five, I wanted to become a doctor. When in grade seven, I wanted to become a lawyer. Yet now in senior high, I don’t even know what interests do I want to focus deeply. And so, as I discover the fig tree analogy, I felt that Sylvia and I are no distinctive souls and the only thing separating the two of us is time. I have so many things I want to do, and yet life is only a little time.
“I want to be great or nothing.”
quoted from the book “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath.
This sentence quite captured the feeling I’ve been having since the early years of senior high. As I stepped into the doors of grade eleven, I have so many interests when deep down I still have no future goals traced in my mind. Despite of those thoughts, my main goal is to be great or nothing just like what she wrote. Because life is suppose to judge you by the accomplishments that you’ve done or your failures, it cannot be in between. I think the main message of the fig tree analogy is that humans are so creative in so many ways yet life limits you into doing so. We became individuals with dreams that are specifically pointing towards one target. That is what the society wants us to be.
The future has always questioned us throughout our life. Even thinking about it suffocates us the most. The future has us wondering on whether we would live up to our expectations or not. And that is the exact feeling of what Sylvia Plath felt when she wrote the metaphor itself. Sylvia was 19 and young towards the adult life that she’s going to face. And I am currently 16 in eleventh grade heading on to the second semester of this grade, overwhelmed by all of the expectations in my surroundings. We are not quite different, aren’t we? But that is every human, I suppose.
This metaphor have changed many people’s perception as they experienced this indecision. And I believe it to be such an influential analogy. By the fig tree, I get to wonder if I could actually be everything all at once. Even when in the end we would all just be pile of dusts in the soils of earth, I want to die with the remembrance of what I’ve done towards the people of the world and the world itself. I want to die with the success of my dreams and I want to accomplish everything I could in my own fig tree. Just like how Sylvia Plath dies with the success of her books.
