Sylvia Plath and the Tree of Life

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” -Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Someone sent me this passage recently. I’d imagine some readers take it as a wakeup call. Maybe even you. Maybe you saw yourself beside Sylvia at the base of the tree. And maybe you remembered and regretted the fruits you’ve let rot and fall. And maybe you said, “A tree that demands we make decisions and sacrifices. A tree of possibilities and paralysis. How true. Yes, a tree of rotting figs, that’s what life is like.”

But that’d demand that you know what a tree is.

Figs grow on fig trees. A fig is a fruit, which is a seed-bearing mass sort of like a tomato maybe. Many fruits, like figs, are filled with sugars, vitamins, and other nutrients. The tree spends its life unconsciously protecting and nurturing these fruits. Everything it does, it does for its fruit.

When a fruit gets old enough, it leaves home and falls from the tree. The seed’s fleshy enclosure houses everything it needs to start growing. The flesh is often edible, and animals relish it. I am an animal, and I am fond of figs. A flash of guilt sometimes overtakes me when I eat fruit because I am robbing the seed of its inheritance. I strip it of its delicious swaddling clothes and leave it naked in the compost bin. But then I recall that trees are much smarter than I am. We evolved with the trees. They’ve changed us, and we’ve changed them. Throwing away the seeds helps trees find new homes. Animals shepherd, and, karmically, the sugars in fruit keep them alive. Plants are magic. They appear to construct the building blocks for all animal life from thin air, and, in fact, they do. The energy they use to do so comes from the sun.

The sun is a star. A star is a nuclear reactor in space bound together by its own weight. Stars are twinkling monuments of collapse. The stellar core is an unimaginable chaos where hydrogen fuses to form helium. Energy erupts in the process and radiates in heavy waves of light. The light from our sun races through the void and in 7 minutes it arrives here. While some light bounces off leaves, most passes through them. During its visit, it encourages reactions in leaves that move electrons around and, after a bit of musical chairs, produce sugar and other energetic compounds. Trees use some of that energy to grow fruit. Return to the beginning of paragraph 3.

Trees live a long time. I’m sure you know the trick with the rings, but I’d guess that often you fail to appreciate it. Large trees have lived in times that we cannot imagine. They’ve survived war, disaster, and celebration. They’re aged, ageless titans sedately existing in harmony with and because of the most fundamental laws of the Universe. And during their hundreds — sometimes thousands — of years, they spread. In Utah lives a single Quaking Aspen that covers 106 acres. Were you to see it, you’d think it that it was many trees, but underground they are all connected, each trunk is part of a single whole. That tree may have been here when our species first left Africa. It may be here when we’re gone.

But someday when it too is gone, the days will end. The sun will burst, throwing its fantastic mass throughout space. Everything that was ever or will ever be here — every tree, you, and me — will sail with it. And then, a nebula will form. And in that nebula, new stars and planets will grow. And then, if a few trillion coins land on heads, maybe a tree will grow on one of them. Better, maybe something entirely different. I wonder what fruit it will bear.

If a fig withers, blackens, and falls, what is lost? How straight is the line from life to death? And when did it become a line?

So I find myself sitting in the crotch of the tree, looking at nothing at all, gasping.