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Missy wasson Ms. Cuba ELA 3.6 3 October 2016 “The Bell Jar” The book I chose to read for this quarter is The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I chose this book because it is a classic that I believe everyone should read in their lifetime. The Bell Jar has many lessons and stories you can learn from or find relatable, even if it is 53 years old.
I read the picture book If you give a pig a party by Laura Nemeroff. This book is about a little girl who wants celebrate her pig's birthday, she is planing a lot of activities , such as the decoration, the games, and the the food. She realized that planning a birthday is a hard work because she has to keep happy to all pig's friends (different animals). This book has a lot of pictures to keep the children's attention when an adult is reading. I read it to my students and my daughter and they want to read it again and again.
“I couldn’t stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life
In this chapter, Esther talks about the bell jar. She says that the sour air from her life is trapped in a bell jar. The sour air is all of the bad things that have happened, all of the things that have ever hurt her. She says that she breathes the sour air that is trapped in the jar, which causes problems in her life. I believe that she means she cannot get away from the sour things because she is constantly near them. You cannot escape air, and Esther cannot escape the sour parts of
Throughout The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath explores a number of themes, particularly regarding the gender roles, and subsequently, the mental health care system for women. Her 19-year-old protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is the vessel through which Plath poses many probing questions about these topics to the reader. In the 1950s when the novel was set, women were held to a high standard: to be attractive but pure, intelligent but submissive, and to generally accept the notion of bettering oneself only in order to make life more comfortable for the significant male in her life. Esther not only deals with the typical problems faced by women in her time, but she has to experience those things through the lens of mental illness though it is up for debate whether or not it was those same issues that caused her “madness” in the first place. In particular, Esther finds herself both struggling against and succumbing to the 1950s feminine ideal- a conflict made evident in her judgments of other women, her relationships with Buddy Willard, and her tenuous goals for the future.
The glass of which a bell jar is constructed is thick and suffocating, intending to preserve its ornamental contents but instead traps in it stale air. The thickness of the bell jar glass prevents the prisoner from clearly seeing through distortion. Sylvia Plath writes with extreme conviction, as The Bell Jar is essentially her autobiography. The fitting title symbolizes not only her suffocation and mental illness, but also the internal struggle of Plath's alter ego and novel protagonist Esther Greenwood. The novel illustrates the theme confinement by highlighting the weaknesses of both Esther and Plath.
Depression can be defined as part of a psychological state of mind that a person might encounter. Most famously recognized psychiatrist Sigmund Freud is known for his Psychodynamic theory. His psychoanalysis theory is known to be successful for treating patients with mental illness. Sylvia Plath, the author of the Bell Jar, makes the main character Esther go through a psychological transformation. Esther’s transformation can be realized through Freud’s psychoanalysis theory as the story unfolds from the beginning to end. The influences of people and events around Esther have affected her transformation.
In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, gender roles are presented as barriers that stop female characters from reaching their full potential and from being in control of their own lives. The novel relates to the Feminist Phase of Second Wave Feminism which is focused on the oppression of women and the roles of women within a society.
Artistic works, including books, tend to reflect their creator. Sylvia Plath authored The Bell Jar shortly before committing suicide. A semi-autobiographical work, many real events became included with names and places changed, though thinly veiled to those who knew her. Published after her death amidst much controversy, the novel follows Esther Greenwood through her depression, suicide attempt, and struggle to recover. While many factual physical events appear in the book, clearly other internal factors affecting Ms. Plath during her final days have representation through the thoughts and feeling of her protagonist. The Bell Jar provides an accurate portrait of the environment and inner struggle of its author in her final days.
Whenever I imagine a bell jar, the bell jar from Beauty and the Beast comes to mind. The beast’s whole life was entrapped because of the rose in the bell jar. As the rose petals dropped, Beast’s chance at becoming a human again, dwindled. The bell jar, an airtight cage, slowly suffocated the rose and him. You could say the same for Ester Greenwood from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, the bell jar represents suffocation from her mental illness, slowly engulfing her sanity and the air she breathes. The bell jar also represents her losing a connection to reality and to people around her. The protagonist is trapped in the walls of glass, it slowly suffocated her sense of reality and sense of belonging in her world. Ester Greenwood, the protagonist
I will be explaining to you my point of view on a few books I have read that I ended up enjoying or didn’t enjoying. You will learn why I didn’t find Tuesday’s With Morrie my favorite book. You will also learn why I found myself enjoying Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie.
One’s identity is the most important lesson to be learned. It is vital part of life knowing who you are in order to live a fulfilled life. Without knowing your identity, and the way you perceive life, it is difficult for others to understand you, along with a struggle to live a happy life. In Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar,” Esther Greenwood struggles to find her own identity, and in the process, she develops a mental illness which helps her discover the person she is on the inside.
“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.” ( http://thinkexist.com/quotes/sylvia_plath/)
have been the young [ones], who tend to take health, whether physical or mental, enormously for granted” (Perloff). Simply stated, the people who benefit from this novel the most are those that are the most like Ester. While The Bell Jar might be especially applicable to modern life, it was still relevant to readers at the time it was published. “The major publishing successes of the 1970s included several of Kurt Vonnegut's novels . . . as well as The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.
For my book I chose to read The Body by Stephen King. This novel is about four young boys taking a journey to find a body somewhere in the woods that is at the county line. This story is about more than just four boys going on an adventure its about them becoming closer to each other and learning real life lessons along the way. The four boys are all going into their first year of middle school so this is a time in their life when they learn things that will help them in life.
“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream” (Plath 237). In The Bell Jar, a roman á clef written by Sylvia Plath, Esther Greenwood is trapped in the bell jar of ideals and customs in the 1950s. Even though Esther has a traumatizing experience, she recovers from it and can move on like anyone would after a bad dream. For most people, a nightmare will not restrict their desires, even though it is possible for the bad dream to return. Esther’s recovery from depression and insanity liberated her from her nightmare of trying to comply with the rules of society. However, Esther kept asking questions if “the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again” (Plath 241). Like a