Initiation Sylvia Plath Analysis

In the short story, “Initiation”, Sylvia Plath utilizes Millicent and the sorority girls to imply the theme that conformity for popularity is not better than being one’s own self. Following Millicent through the hazing period or ‘initiation’ of a sorority-like high school social group, the reader witnesses Plath’s changing of the character. In the beginning of the story, Plath describes the protagonist in the basement of a house, detailing how it felt “dark and warm, like the inside of a sealed jar”(1). A sealed jar connotes an enclosed, suffocating place. Plath’s description of the basement from Millicent’s point of view offers an idea of what initiation week is, a suffocating unpleasant time, similar to being locked in a murky, gloomy space. The jar symbolizes the social group of which the protagonist wants to be a part of. The social group is
Thus, demonstrating the idea that to be popular, one must conform to societal pressures. Towards the end of the story, during one of her ‘tasks’, she talks to an older gentleman on the bus who introduces her to the fictional heather birds. According to this gentleman, “heather birds live on the mythological moors and fly about all day long, singing wild and sweet in the sun”(6). Plath uses heather birds to symbolize what her protagonist truly is. Instead of waiting hand and foot on a girl in a grade above her, Millicent is meant to “[sing] wild and sweet in the sun”. She is meant to be free, not strapped to the ball and chain that is popularity. Plath’s description of her principal character locked in the basement of her social group is reminiscent of a heather bird trapped in a jar. From where she is sitting, she can see a “small rectangular window”(1). The light that comes through that window represents individuality. The “bluish light”(1) coming through the window embodies Plath’s idea of one’s own self outshining popularity, thus taking