...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.
To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a sense of confinement and despair, portraying a distorted perception of reality.
In this quote, Sylvia Plath uses the metaphor of a 'bell jar' to illustrate the feeling of being trapped in a suffocating environment. The imagery of a 'dead baby' suggests lifelessness and hopelessness, conveying how the person experiences the world as an oppressive and nightmarish reality. It highlights the struggles of mental illness and the isolation that often accompanies it, as well as the distortion of reality that can occur when one feels trapped in their own mind.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about mental health awareness, this quote could be used to illustrate the feeling of despair experienced by those suffering from depression.
More from Sylvia Plath
All quotes βThe 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.
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.
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?
I keep wanting to crawl back into the womb.
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.
Similar quotes
Our knowledge of God is perfected by gratiitude: we are thankful and rejoice in the experience of the truth that He is love.
Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child's eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.
In fighting terror, you cannot let it interfere with the normal life of civilians in Israel.
To become who we are as creatures made in the image and likeness of God, we have to be nothing and everything at once, since this is what God is. ... If we accept who we are, we are manifesting God and radiating Christ. The latter unfolding of the divine life within us does not need to go anywhere _x000D_ or do anything special.
Never be without remembrance of Him, for His remembrance gives strength and wings to the bird of the Spirit.
In the morning, when the nothing vase casts a something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that?