Apathy In Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

Throughout Plath’s writings, a nonchalant tone of indifference shapes the content of most of her works. Imputed to Plath’s depression, the apathy found in her works both exemplifies and characterizes the mental health struggle. Diagnosed with Endogenous depression, Plath’s apathy supposedly arises from an internal stressor as opposed to an external one, and Plath describes her internal stressors and responses to them in her works. However, tragic events exacerbate Plath’s melancholia but serve as an sublime inspiration for her works. Plath “writes well, in snatches and stanzas, about the impersonal moments of personal experience, when the sense of everything beyond one’s selfhood dominates the mind” (Irving 5-15). Through writing apathetically and objectively rather than reactively, Plath captures the essence of her despondency, which people relate to their own woes.

Describing moments where she experiences an aloofness from herself, Plath does not react to her emotions and their upsetting nature but apathetically recounts her experiences. In her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, Plath states that she “felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.” (Plath, The Bell Jar, 3) While Plath’s experience should concern her, Plath remains apathetic despite their worrisome essence. These emotions and her apathetic response all stem from her depression. Plath’s unrest manifests itself through the obsession with purity and wholeness despite the fact that she feels empty in some