...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
Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled “enemy?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote questions the morality of society's responses to individual versus collective violence.
Sylvia Plath's quote challenges the ethical inconsistencies in how society treats individuals who commit murder compared to those who engage in mass killing under the guise of war. It provokes thought about the values we assign to human life and the justifications we make for violence, highlighting the hypocrisy in honoring those who kill as warriors while condemning others for murder.
Themes
ViolenceMoralityHypocrisyWarSociety
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the ethics of war and violence.
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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