...we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
Sylvia PlathRead
Sometimes I nursed starfish alive in jam jars of seawater and watched them grow back lost arms. On this day, this awful birthday of otherness, my rival, somebody else, I flung the starfish against a stone. Let it perish.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on themes of empathy and the struggle with feelings of otherness.
In this quote, Sylvia Plath uses the metaphor of a starfish being nurtured, and then violently cast aside, to express the tension between nurturing life and succumbing to destructive feelings, often spurred by rivalry and otherness. The act of nurturing represents compassion and the human desire to help, while the action of flinging the starfish away symbolizes a rejection of both empathy and the connectedness we seek with others, revealing a deep inner conflict that resonates with feelings of isolation and rivalry.
Themes
EmpathyRivalryOthernessNurturingDestruction
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the importance of empathy, this quote could illustrate the consequences of neglecting our compassion.
More from Sylvia Plath
All quotes →The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past.
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It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative--which ever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.
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You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?
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I keep wanting to crawl back into the womb.
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It's the living, the eating, the sleeping that everyone needs. Ideas don't matter so much after all. My three best friends are Catholic. I can't see their beliefs, but I can see the things they love to do on earth. When you come right down to it, I do believe in the freedom of the individual.
Sylvia PlathRead
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