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Sebastien Skoko
“So many people were shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would
open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them. And
really, you didn’t have to belong to a club to feel related to other human beings.”
Above is a passage taken from the short story Initiation by Sylvia Plath. This
account follows the life of a young girl named Millicent and of her experiences with
her high school sorority. This particular passage is taken during Millicent’s initiation
to that sorority, after she had successfully completed several trials. It is at this point
that she begins coming to the realization that she doesn’t really need to become
part of this group to connect with the world and to advance her social standing.
To begin with, the first discovery Millicent makes as she is going through her
initiation is one of camaraderie and friendship. While aboard the bus with her “big
initiation, she is instructed to go to each one of the bus’s passengers and inquire as
to what they regularly consume for breakfast. However, they were not to know that
this was a trial in her initiation. At first, Millicent felt intimidated by the cold, stern
gazes of the numerous passengers who were each keeping to themselves, sealed
up in their own personal bubbles. Nevertheless, as Millicent neared the end of her
survey, the general atmosphere had considerably lightened and most people were
now grinning quietly to themselves. Then the last man that she interviewed spun off
some odd tale about eating the eyebrows of what he called heather birds on toast
and Millicent couldn’t but feel attracted to this strange man and his fantastic tales.
This experience was naught but the first of many similar ones that ensued. As
Millicent approached different people with various odd and outlandish requests,
Concordantly, these seemingly ridiculous and spontaneous events were all having
the same effect of bringing a little more flavour and laughter into all the lives of the
people involved. It is this that the author hopes to communicate to us in the first
sentence of the above passage. When people begin to show interest in one another,
they all quite willingly open up to each other, even if their addressees happen to be
complete strangers. Millicent even goes to say herself: “Why, this was wonderful,
With that, Millicent begins to ponder the reason for which she even decided to join
the sorority in the first place. In the final sentence of the passage, the author shows
that through the experience of her initiation, Millicent began to see the value of
independence and freedom, things that would become limited should she become a
member of the sorority. Though the group would take her down the easiest path
toward the culmination of her popularity, her overall behaviour and life would be
restricted through the image, codes and rules set forth by it. So, as she realized
during her initiation, she could advance her social standing and make a name for
herself in her community just as well on her own. In the end Millicent decided that
she valued freedom and independence much more than having the image of the