The Fallacy of Sylvia Plath’s Fig Tree Analogy
The paralysing fears of never living up to one’s potential
To the version of me from six years ago
You are 19 and have your whole life ahead of you. Carrying The Bell Jar1 by Sylvia Plath in your tote bag, you sip iced-tea with Maggi, and nod along with everyone else during your mathematics and statistics lectures, as if you understand anything at all, especially your purpose in life. You are living your dark academia dreams borrowed from The Secret History2 and Dead Poets Society3 — paralysed by the fear of making wrong career choices, never living up to people’s expectations, and spending the rest of your life stuck inside a room with a yellow wallpaper4.
“I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.”
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Your biggest fear is never living up to your “potential”
All your life, well-intentioned people told you that you have “so much potential”. Yet, you struggle to figure out what it is for. You secretly hope your life’s purpose would be revealed to you in a dream, making your life up to that point make sense. Heavy with the weight of not knowing, you feel like you are lagging in a race you never even signed up for. Perhaps at the worst possible time then, Sylvia Plath creeps into your life with the fig tree analogy, and you see your life crumble into pieces with each word you read.
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor… and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
You toss and turn in your bed, convinced that you are too late, the figs are already rotten. You are one question away from losing your mind: “how are you?”
The fig tree analogy is being quoted out of context
Here’s the full picture: following the vivid description of the suffocating feeling of indecision, the narrator enters a restaurant, eats, and feels significantly better.
“I don't know what I ate, but I felt immensely better after the first mouthful. It occurred to me that my vision of the fig tree and all the fat figs that withered and fell to earth might well have arisen from the profound void of an empty stomach.”
- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
This re-contextualisation of the fig tree analogy softens its weight with a simple truth: deep sorrow can grow from small, unmet needs. The ache is real, but so is the need to ground ourselves. So, how do we do that?
Solving the Fig Tree Problem Statement
As you eventually admit that you are losing the plot, you take the first step in a long journey of solving the fig tree ‘problem statement’. Acknowledgment leads to acceptance, and finally action. Rumination on the purpose of life does not provide any answers. Your “purpose” is meant to be discovered gradually by trying your hand at things, rooting yourself in the present moment, and letting whether something was the “right decision” be determined not by the outcome but what you discovered about yourself in the process. Instead of being suspended in animated inaction, you need to get up and pick a fig (or as many as you feel right). If you do not like the taste, you could try another one. You may lose time, effort, and energy in doing so, as Plath may have feared, but you would also be closer to humming the song of your heart than ever before.
Who knows, your purpose in life may very well be trying and relishing each fig while it lasted. Who ever forbid you from trying multiple ones? Who even cares if they turned out to be of the wrong kind? What if as some of the figs wrinkled and went black, new ones popped out of the tree?
You are the fig tree
There is no ‘one true purpose’ in life to chase: some of us are destined to have multiple purposes at different points in life. You need not make it your life’s goal to narrow down your choices and squeeze yourself to fit in a neat box. Your curiosity is your greatest strength. The eagerness to explore a million things instead of a settling for a fixed path eventually becomes your superpower.
As you take actions rooted in the present moment and continue to experience more of life, you realise the fallacy of the fig tree analogy. The choices that the figs represent stem from your abilities that you continue to build on, not merely the “potential” you were born with. The decisions you take do not always have to come at the cost of losing all the other ‘figs’. The figs grow as you do. New figs emerge, sweeter and bigger over time. You are the fig tree.
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
To all those on the journey of finding themselves, may clarity eventually find you. Until then, may you enjoy living in the questions, as Rilke5 recommended.
‘Library of Longings’ seeks to fill your inbox with comfort letters. From literary thoughts to gentle musings on life, this is a space for tender hearts and quiet seekers. Welcome are those who carry an ache for something just out of reach — a feeling that remains unnamed, a home you cannot remember, a lost piece of the jigsaw puzzle — something that will finally make everything make sense. Let’s explore together what lies deep within our souls.
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The Bell Jar is a novel by Sylvia Plath, originally published in 1963. It portrays a young woman’s struggle with depression, and is the source of the Fig Tree Analogy.
The Secret History is a novel by Donna Tart, published in 1992. It tells the story of a closely knit group of Classics students at an elite liberal arts college that end up committing a terrible crime.
Dead Poets Society is a 1989 film directed by Peter Weir and written by Tom Schulman. It follows a group of students in a conservative boarding school who learn to rebel against the status quo and find deeper meaning in life with the help of their new poetry teacher.
The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in 1892. It is about post-natal depression and a woman's fall into psychosis.
Rainer Maria Rilke, in Letters to a Young Poet (1929), writes, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
wow, i never thought about it this way before
I loved your essay and how you reframed the fig tree analogy—not as a cautionary tale, but as a reminder to eat (literally and metaphorically), to act, and to allow purpose to emerge. That recontextualization felt so grounding. I especially connected with your final point: that we are not the ones picking from the fig tree—we are the tree. So glad our pieces found each other!