8 Comments
Apr 25Liked by caitlyn

you are not the fig, you are the tree

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And you’re my favorite 🥺

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Apr 22Liked by caitlyn

this was so beautifully written! i loved reading it you are an incredibly talented writer

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Tysm 🥺🤎 you made my day

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i love sylvia plath sm and its so hard to see everyone on tiktok talking about her “famous” fig tree theory. it feels like everyone is just limiting all of her work to the fig tree thing.

she is so amazing and all of her work should be talked about. im so passionate about her

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Yes, I can understand that. I also feel like it’s an important theory/ metaphor to highlight, especially for young people who are feeling lost (most of us, right?!) 🤎 maybe for some, it’s a gateway drug into all of her other brilliant work 😉

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I think about the fig metaphor often. I’ve been in the painstaking process of changing careers and I’ve had to work very hard to remember that I can eat more than one fig in a lifetime.

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I read The Bell Jar when I was 17 and painstakingly copied the fig tree part into my journal. I still think about it all the time. I wish I'd known then that I didn't have to choose to be just one thing. This was a great article! 🖤

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