Analysis of a Key Passage: InitiationSebastien 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 sister”, a senior member of the sorority

charged with personalizing Millicent’s 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, they would each respond by playing along

and brightening up themselves. 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, the way she felt a sudden comradeship with a stranger”.

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 sorority as her silhouette.