Driven Into Depression
The central issue of every story is conflict. Conflict is what makes literature interesting. There are six types of conflict throughout literature. Some conflicts are external and some are internal. The foundation for external conflict is “Man versus Man”. This type of conflict involves one character against another character, and can be caused for many different reasons including religious, moral, and social differences. Sylvia Plath uses “Man versus Man” conflict many times throughout her novel, The Bell Jar, as the main character falls into depression as a result of the characters around her. Esther Greenwood from the novel, The Bell Jar, becomes depressed and develops a mental illness because of her mother’s incompetence to acknowledge what is wrong with her daughter, her ex boyfriend's hypocritical ways of life, and her Doctor’s carelessness when it came to treatments.
Esther’s mother’s incompetence to acknowledge what was wrong with her daughter played a major role in Esther developing depression. Esther had just received her first shock treatment at Doctor Gordon’s private hospital. It was an awful experience for Esther. The machine had been loud and there were blue flashes that jolted her. Doctor Gordon told Esther’s mother that after a few more treatments that Esther should be much better, however Esther never wanted to undergo these treatments again.
“I’m through with that Doctor Gordon,”I said, after we had left Dodo and her black station wagon behind the pines. “You can call him up and tell him I’m not coming next week.”
My mother smiled. “I knew my baby wasn’t like that.”
I looked at her. “Like what?”
“Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that hospital.” she paused. “I knew you...
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...he remembered what he had done to her, and she was too scared. She did not want to have to endure the pain of anymore shock treatments, and she lost respect for doctors. Instead of trusting her doctors, Esther feared them.
Sylvia Plath uses the external conflict “Man versus Man” throughout her novel to represent the events the main character endures as she falls into depression as a result of the ways that the rest of the characters treated her. Esther became depressed because her mother was in denial about what was happening, her ex-boyfriend was a hypocritical liar, and her Doctor was inadequately trained to work the medical machinery. Conflict is what makes the reader become engaged and engrossed in a book, and this is exactly what Sylvia Plath did.
Works Cited
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: First Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Print.
First, the author uses conflict to show what the characters have to overcome throughout the course of the story, such as Mrs. Baker forcing Holling to do chores at school and
To engage the reader, authors use a lot of various conflicts. An example of this would be the book “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by C.S Lewis. One conflict that is external conflict used to engage the reader is person vs person. In the story, Lucy Pevensie - the youngest of the four Pevensie children - finds the wardrobe and the world inside it, which is called Narina first. She then tells her other siblings about the wardrobe and Narina. However, her siblings don’t believe her . On page 27, it says “‘A jolly good hoax, Lu,’ he said as he came out again; ‘you would have really taken us in, I must admit. We half believed you.’” This engages the reader by making them wanting to find out if her siblings really believe her at the end.
Explain how the conflict arises and go on to discuss in detail how the writer uses it to explore an important theme.
The struggle of man versus man occurs throughout the whole story. The book starts out that Lauren is in her community behind a huge protective wall. The wall is there to protect her and her community from the rest of the world. When people start jumping over the fence to steal things from their community, guards are setup to prevent things from being stolen. This is a struggle between many versus man because the people that jump over the wall will do anything to get what they need, and this means they will kill for it. Outside the wall, people are killing one another and robbing them just to stay alive. It is a fight for survival and the strongest survive. The s...
Conflict is the hurdle between characters of a story which create worries for the readers about the next plot of that story and which will be resolved in the next plot. Children’s literature can only engage the reader and make the story successful on the basis of conflict. Conflict produces the drama and which makes their readers more involved in that story. In literary elements, there are three common of conflict in a story: 1. Character vs Character 2. Character vs the world 3. Character vs him/herself. (module 2). Hana’s suitcase story has conflict of character versus the world and The Paper Bag Princess’s story has conflict of character versus society. There are the two different conflicts in the two stories. In Hana’s suitcase, Hana is
Conflict is described by James H. Pickering as, "The struggle or encounter within the plot of two opposing forces that serves to create reader interest and suspense" (1169). This is found all throughout this story. (1169) Macomber faces both internal and external conflict. The author displays conflict between Macomber and his wife: He was very wealthy, and would be much wealthier, and he knew she would not leave him ever now. That was one of the few things that he really knew… His wife had been a great beauty and she was still a great beauty in Africa, but she was not a great enough beauty any more at home to be able to leave him and better herself and she knew it and he knew it. She had missed the chance to leave him and he knew it. If he had been better with women she would probably have started to worry about him getting another new, beautiful wife; but she knew too much about him to worry about him either.
We see clearly a man against nature conflict as the background. The story starts with Bobinot and his son at a store probably doing groceries, follow by a really bad storm approaching. They both want to go back home, but it is impossible, so the best solution is wait until the storm stops, so they can continue their journey. As foreground is the conflict man against himself, but in this case herself. I am referring to the feminine character that first, is fighting with the fear and uncertainly of not knowing where her husband and son are. On the other hand, this
On the eve of her freedom from the asylum, Esther laments, “I had hoped, at my departure, I would feel sure and knowledgeable about everything that lay ahead- after all, I had been ‘analyzed.’ Instead, all I could see were question marks” (243). The novel is left open-ended, with a slightly optimistic tone but no details to help the reader fully understand the final step of her healing process. Esther desired to be free of social conventions and double standards, but consistently imposed them upon herself and on the people around her. Her evolution in understanding never reaches a satisfying conclusion, and the reader is also left with nothing but question marks.
For starters, man vs self is a very common conflict that appears in my book. Shane, who was diagnosed with a disease at a young age, faces some challenges in his life. At first, he struggled with his disability and struggled to meet new people. However, Shane took action and decided that he could do so much more in life. Shane would overcome his challenges and would allow himself to do greater things. Another book that has a man vs self conflict is Catching Fire, the second book of The Hunger Game series, by Suzanne Collins. The protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, struggles with internal conflicts with her role in the rebellion and her own guilt (enotes).
Prompt #3: “Most often, literary works have both internal conflict (individual v. self) and external conflict (individual v. individual, society, nature, or technology)”.
Another internal conflict is how Lilly feels responsible for her mother?s death. When she was four, she accidentally shot her mom, and wasn?t able to forgive herself. The reason she runs away in the first place is because her dad tells her that her mom left her, which is both an internal, and man versus man conflict. She?s mad at her dad for saying it, but can?t fully convince herself that it isn?t true. There?s a man versus society conflict when men beat up Rossaleen because of her color, and another internal conflict when May is so overcome with grief that she cant stop crying.
An irony that is carried throughout the entire novel is the fact that Esther works in a prestigious fashion world, yet she sees everything gruesomely and cynically. This is also according to the article Down a
Conflict is apart of the model of society. It is a very common component of reality and also in stories and other forms literature. In stories, it adds sensation and stimulates the minds the people who are reading it. Characters can be in conflict with another character, an object, or themselves. When characters are having conflicts however it is more than just a mere disagreement but it is a situation in which the characters detect a threat to their physical, emotional, power and status well-being.
Esther Greenwood struggles with perfectionism and society lead to a downward spiral and suicide attempt. Her inability to choose a path for her life and her social interactions with those around her makes her feel trapped inside herself. Esther feels that she has been rejected from both social and intellectual worlds, causing her world to totally change. Her lack of identity produces the irony found in The Bell Jar and it is only when she learns to stand outside of the world of the bell jar, does she truly begin to see her innerself. Jay Cee’s comments about her inatequacy and her rejection from writing school have a detramental impact on Esther’s self-esteem that she feels she cannot overcome. She feels she is not good enough or perfect enough to achieve the happiness she desires.
I believe the conflict in the story is an internal one. I think it is the conflict between the old woman's will power and Mother Nature. She encounters many obstacles that would influence most people to give up but she has motivation to get her task done. These encounters include a bush catching onto her dress, a scarecrow frightening her and discouragement from a white man. She also had to climb hills, cross streams and crawl under barbed wire fences which is certainly not considered an easy task for an elderly woman.. If I was forced to deal with these obstacles I know that I would most likely have turned around but her will power was too strong to let Mother Nature win.