Analysis of a Key Passage: Initiation

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

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.