Nature P & H

Question 1

Tulips:‘The tulips are too exitable, it is winter here’

Answer 1

• sense of inspiration
• but also contrast to snowdrop where winter decays everything
• so, contrast to Whitaker
• antithesis between tulips vs quiet + sense of stasis in setting

Question 2

Tulips:‘the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody’

Answer 2

• liquid alliteration + w alliteration = quiet soundless quality
• sense of synaesthesia + anaesthesia
• ‘white’ + soudnless nature plays into loss of identity
• plath had just been hospitalised for an appendectomy - the stones and her fear of medical treatment in other poems
• anti-romantic as she loses her identity in nature

Question 3

Tulips:‘the vivid tulips eat my oxygen’

Answer 3

• parasitic representation of nature
• ‘vivid’ contrasts to the ‘white walls’
• sense of jealousy that these tulips can thrive in this seemingly hostile environment
• sense of primality - but also irony, as plants ‘eat’ carbon dioxide so sense of malignity & danger

Question 4

Tulips:‘between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, I have no face’

Answer 4

• imagery of sight ‘eyes’ + ‘no face’ = no ‘eyes’ corresponding to ‘white’ - relating to blindness. adds to sunaesthetitic quality
• malignity of nature - there is no space for her - nature doesn’t allow her to be
• numbness as if a lobotomy - the bell jar, valerie
• also macrocosmic image of sun juxtaposes microcosmic image of tulips emphasising the power of nature

Question 5

Wuthering Heights