Issac Olson
Mrs. Prokott
Hour 5
14, December, 2016
Submitting To Depression. As knowledge makes its way through history, the perception between right and wrong alters in the looming shadow of it. Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar features a character named Esther who suffered from a mental illness. Esther’s world is completely different to how someone in her position would be treated today. It is imperative to see that Esther’s depression is a part of the setting, due to the immoralities we can see using a 21st-century lense. So, how would Esther's live be different is she was in 2016, and would she suffer as much? All things considered, between the nurses, her mother, and Joan, Esther hates electroshock treatment (EST) the most. Ester began EST
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Looking at what Esther had to go through at the state mental hospital vs. the private one is an interesting cross-examination. At the state, they had a lot of patients to consider when doing anything, now that Esther is at the private institution, her help is very individualized and more vigorous; for better or …show more content…
When Esther went to go talk to a physiatrist for the first time, she tells him a variety of issues she is having, like, “...I told Doctor Gordon about not sleeping and not eating and not reading. I didn’t tell him about the handwriting, which bothered me most of all.” (130). These are things we saw Esther doing in the first chapters of the book that we lose after the Marco incident. Esther’s depression also changes the setting of the book by itself, through the actions it puts Esther through, like the suicide attempts. All and all, Esther’s depression is arguably the main character in the story but is dependent on Esther to perform actions. Esther is completely bound to her depression, and that creates Ether’s movement to different places. This edits the Setting in such a way, that the only thing Esther can do is be uncooperative as we see in the book. Esther’s depression is not only a part of the setting, but it is a character that is affecting Esther’s train of
...es these primitive standards, she becomes melancholy because she does not attune into the gender roles of women, which particularly focus on marriage, maternity, and domesticity. Like other nineteen year old women, Esther has many goals and ambitions in her life. Nevertheless, Esther is disparaged by society’s blunt roles created for women. Although she experiences a tremendous psychological journey, she is able to liberate herself from society’s suffocating constraints. Esther is an excellent inspiration for women who are also currently battling with society’s degrading stereotypes. She is a persistent woman who perseveres to accomplish more than being a stay at home mother. Thus, Esther is a voice for women who are trying to abolish the airless conformism that is prevalent in 1950’s society.
...g either one.” (Plath 120). Society has come a long way from there, though a margin still contain these views, more and more people are forming feminist ideals. The only if is that if Esther were here today our world would suit her much more comfortably.
In the novel, Esther Greenwood, the main character, is a young woman, from a small town, who wins a writing competition, and is sent to New York for a month to work for a magazine. Esther struggles throughout the story to discover who she truly is. She is very pessimistic about life and has many insecurities about how people perceive her. Esther is never genuinely happy about anything that goes on through the course of the novel. When she first arrives at her hotel in New York, the first thing she thinks people will assume about her is, “Look what can happen in this country, they’d say. A girl lives in some out-of-the-way town for nineteen years, so poor she can’t afford a
Sylvia Plath’s novel, “The Bell Jar”, tells a story of a young woman’s descent into mental illness. Esther Greenwood, a 19 year old girl, struggles to find meaning within her life as she sees a distorted version of the world. In Plath’s novel, different elements and themes of symbolism are used to explain the mental downfall of the book’s main character and narrator such as cutting her off from others, forcing her to delve further into her own mind, and casting an air of negativity around her. Plath uses images of rotting fig trees and veils of mist to convey the desperation she feels when confronted with issues of her future. Esther Greenwood feels that she is trapped under a bell jar, which distorts her view of the world around her.
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.
The listing plath uses builds detail but also creates a long rambling effect, the repetition of the connective “and” emphasises the endless opportunities that are available to Esther. While many women would dive at the opportunities that are available, esther’s response to the dilemma of choosing is negative. She feels burdened with the dilemma and feels “dreadfully inadequate” therefore due to esther’s negative perception of self makes esther belief that she is unqualified to make a decision. But why does esther feel this way? What is the cause of the hesitation? - is it because of her mental illness?
Life is full of endless amounts of beautiful encounters for every character in the novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, except for Esther. She suffers from a severe and complex mental illness that impacts her life greatly. Although it is clear that Esther suffers strongly from depression in the novel, Sylvia Plath chooses to tell her life abstractly through countless symbols and ironies to prove that Esther depression completely consumes her. Everything that Esther sees is through a lens of depression, which scewed her outlook on life. 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.
The events in New York introduce us to the beginning of Esther’s psychological transformation. The story first inaugurates with the executions of the Rosenbergs, where the Rosenbergs were electrocuted to death. They were believed to be supporting communism. The executions of the Rosenbergs deeply affected Esther’s mental state because of the way that they were executed. She believed that electrocution was unconstitutional and should have not been applied to them. According to Esther in chapter one, “I knew something was wrong with me that summer, because all I could think about was the Rosenbergs and how stupid I’d been to buy those uncomfortable, expensive clothes”(Plath 2). This quote emphasizes how Esther is becoming unable to control her mind mainly because of the events surrounding her. Based on Freud’s theory, a person’s mind is composed of both unconscious and conscious thoughts. When these thoughts interact they create a state of repression, where the person becomes unaware of conflicting problems that they be having. According to Rashmi Nemade author of “Psychology of Depression- Psychodynamic Theories Esther”, repress...
Before visiting New York and getting thrown into the real world Esther had been very successful academically:
...be a death-obsessed poet, and usually all of her pieces were dark and negative. “Although the seemingly inevitable suicide of Sylvia Plath would invoke a weak image of her, as does the main character of her novel’s own suicide attempt, it is in her work where we see her emotional triumphs as well as her emotional setbacks,” (Sylvia). Esther is as weak as Plath, she is negative, and does not have any motivation to complete anything.
Obviously, Esther has both physical and mental issues as she cannot do most of the essential things people do in their daily life, like most importantly: eating and sleeping. Esther’s mental ailments include her disillusionment that actions have no purpose or meaning as everyone only ends up the same way in the end: dead. Her depressive thoughts eat at her until a level of madness is reached. All of her problems quoted are an effect of the climax when she is denied access into a writing class. When Esther’s condition worsened, she attempts to kill herself several times, once on a beach date with her friends. During this trip Esther swims out as far as she could and decides to force herself to drown, but fails. Plath uses defeated diction with several words like “panting”, “strenuous exertion”, “I dived and dived again”, “popped”, “mocked me”, “beaten”, and “turned back” (Plath 161) establish her failure in killing herself. In this case the defeated diction turns out in a positive outcome because Esther’s body will not physically kill itself. In contrast, Esther attempting to kill herself in this way shows that
The beginning of the novel introduces the reader to Esther O'Malley Robertson as the last of a family of extreme women. She is sitting in her home, remembering a story that her grandmother told her a long time ago. Esther is the first character that the reader is introduced to, but we do not really understand who she is until the end of the story. Esther's main struggle is dealing with her home on Loughbreeze Beach being torn down, and trying to figure out the mysteries of her family's past.
At the end of the novel, Esther finally see’s a light at the end of the tunnel. She finally realizes that there is hope for her to become healthy again. Once Esther realizes that she will not always feel as bad as she does, she also comes to the conclusion that all the negativity and questioning in her life have made her into the person she has become. Esther finally realizes what her true identity is and she is okay with who she has become.
He is conceited and artificial. When he asks what Ester thinks is wrong, she recognizes that he considers the root of her mental instability to be superficial: “That made it sound as if nothing was really wrong, I only thought it was wrong.” (130) To contrast, Dr. Nolan is a friend to Ester and connects to her on a deeply emotional level during her recovery. She understands Ester’s desire to not have visitors and, in the interest of her patient’s health, ensures that she has no more. She sympathizes with Ester’s fear of electroshock therapy and reassures her that when she enters treatment again, it will make her feel better – much unlike the fiasco of Ester’s shock therapy under Dr. Gordon.
...he must learn to love and trust others. Dr. Nolan assures Esther that the shock treatments she will give her will be safe and admistered properly. Esther ends things with Buddy and becomes his friend. She even loses her virginity to a man she hardly knows. Esther has thrown away all her cares and does not do what she is expected to do by society but instead does what she is comfortable with. Sadly, Esther’s hospital friend, Joan, commits suicide and leaves Esther shattered and scarred. However, Esther continues to get better when she learns to start trusting Dr. Nolan and Buddy. She ultimately begins to trust her self as well. After learning to disregard the expectation of everyone else and to set her own goals, Esther heals exponentially. In the end, Esther enters a conference room where she will be told if she may return home now that she has come of her bell jar.