Go Eat Some Figs
“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.”
– Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
The orchard is quiet in the early morning. The grass is damp beneath the soles of my shoes. Sunlight filters through gnarled branches, dappling the ground with alternating patches of light and dark. The air is thick with the sweet, earthy, and almost cloying scent of ripening fruit. Bees hover lazily over blossoms, and the occasional fig, heavy and dark, drops to the soil with a soft thud. The trees hold on to the ones that are sharp and green, loosen their grip on others that are blushed and ready, and let go of the rest. I walk slowly, admiring each one suspended in its own state of becoming. I pass rows of trees, not taking anything from them.
From afar, the orchard seems endless in its abundance, every branch heavy with potential. Up close, it reveals its own burdens. It is overwhelming.
It is tempting to believe that standing still preserves possibility. That by not choosing, nothing truly slips away. But the grounds of the orchard tell a different story. What falls does not wait to be mourned. It darkens, splits, and sinks into the soil, feeding roots that will produce more fruit next season. The orchard is generous, but it is not sentimental. It does not pause for hesitation or regret. It simply continues to grow, season after season, indifferent to the weight of what has been left behind.
Illustration: Keya Arora Chaudhuri.
Sylvia Plath gives this unease a name in The Bell Jar, where she writes of sitting in the crotch of a fig tree, starving, paralysed by the fear of choosing one at the expense of all the others. Each fig is a possible life: full of either love, art, ambition, domesticity, or adventure. Unable to choose, she watches the figs swell, soften, and rot, dropping to the ground one by one. The image created is a striking one. A tree heavy with ripening potential futures, each fruit a different self, and a girl perched among the branches, so afraid of choosing wrong that she chooses nothing at all. Time does what time always does, it passes. The figs fall. Hunger turns from possibility to regret. The fig tree is not about indecision alone, but about the violence of abundance and how we respond in the face of seemingly endless choices.
Decades later, the Internet has turned Plath’s figs into a shorthand for paralysis. People gather across platforms to articulate the same quiet panic, cataloguing every possible version of themselves and mourning them pre-emptively. The experience of being frozen in the branches seems to be universal. However, online conversation surrounding this has opened a trapdoor which lets us mistake awareness for action and naming our fear for resolving it.
You see, the tragedy of the fig tree is not that a wrong choice is made. It is that no choice is. The figs rot not because they are undesirable (on the contrary, they are incredibly desirable), but because they are left untouched.
The orchard, of course, does not exist. There is no gentle light, no damp grass, and no fruit waiting to be admired (or eaten). It is merely a space we return to when the weight of possibility feels unbearable. The world that exists beyond it is less forgiving. Choices must be made there, without guarantees. We are required to act or run the risk of remaining stagnant forever.
The orchard disappears the moment we step out of it.
Go eat some figs. That’s what I’m going to do.
Keya Arora Chaudhuri has a fondness for literary fiction novels, tea, dance, and cats. She is a student of The Shri Ram School, Moulsari, NCR.
This article went live on January sixteenth, two thousand twenty six, at twenty-three minutes past eight in the morning.The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
