Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, described the life of a young lady with mental issues. The difficulties the main character had were similar to suicidal depression. WebMD defines depression as having intense feelings of sadness that last longer than typical. Depression may last for days or weeks at a time and the person feels hopeless and helpless (Goldberg). Suicidal depression is a type of depression in which the person who has this diagnosis feels they want to purposely kill or harm themselves (Goldberg). The main character, Esther Greenwood, had this type of characteristic. Focusing on how to harm herself, Esther’s depression played a large role in the novel. Her everyday life was compounded by the feelings she had with respect …show more content…
Gordon’s hospital after having electroshock therapy, or ECT, also known as electroconvulsive therapy (Mayo Clinic). The light she sees upon receiving the ECT was blue, and she recalls the light she saw when she was shocked by the lamp was blue as well. When discussing the color of the light Esther saw, it can be concluded that the blue color may signify sadness or punishment for doing something wrong. Many times throughout the book, Sylvia Plath uses the color blue to describe situations. Usually the word blue is used when Esther is discussing something that has upset her or caused sadness in her life. When she receives ECT, she states, “I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done” (Plath143). Esther is also very sad when she discusses her father. Her father died when she was a young girl and she missed him terribly. His death is more of a trigger point for Esther because being with her father is the last time she can recall being happy. Her memory recalls fun times she had and the things he taught her. She also reminisces about what her father might have taught her if he were to have lived. From insects to foreign languages, Esther’s misery in life is tied to her wanting to be with her father and attempting suicide is one way she can come to be with him. The electrical shock of the lamp brings back the memories and may be one reason why Esther is constantly depressed and unable to climb out of the hole she seems to remain in. When Esther visits her father’s gravesite, she sits and cries. Because of her loss, Esther decides to attempt suicide later. Esther leaves a note saying, “I am going for a long walk” (Plath 167). Because of the sorrow she felt regarding her father and the connection with happiness associated when her father was in her life, Esther felt the bottle of pills would arrange circumstances for her to be back in his presence. After taking the pills, she experiences
---------------------------------------------------------------------- This essay will compare the ways in which the novels "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath and "Quicksand" by Nella Larsen deal with relationships, paying particular attention to how this aids the characterisation of Esther Greenwood and Helga Crane, the central characters respectively. It will explore their relationships with other characters in the novel, especially how the authors use relationships to fulfil their writing aims. It will also discuss the relationship between the protagonist and the reader, and how successfully this is achieved through the novel's language. Finally, it will attempt to compare the ways in which they relate to the world around them, which is particularly fascinating as although both novels could pass as fiction, they are largely autobiographical, raising the question of why the author's chose to tell their own life stories in this relatively detached way.
“I couldn’t stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life
Sylvia Plath wrote the semi autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, in which the main character, Esther, struggles with depression as she attempts to make herself known as a writer in the 1950’s. She is getting the opportunity to apprentice under a well-known fashion magazine editor, but still cannot find true happiness. She crumbles under her depression due to feeling that she doesn’t fit in, and eventually ends up being put into a mental hospital undergoing electroshock therapy. Still, she describes the depth of her depression as “Wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street a cafe in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air” (Plath 178). The pressure to assimilate to society’s standards from her mother, friends, and romantic interests, almost pushes her over the edge and causes her to attempt suicide multiple times throughout her life. Buddy Willard, Esther’s boyfriend at a time, asks her to marry him repeatedly in which she declines. Her mother tries to get her to marry and makes her go to therapy eventually, which leads to the mental hospital. Esther resents the way of settling down and making a family, as well as going out and partying all night. She just wants to work to become a journalist or publisher. Though, part of her longs for these other lives that she imagines livings, if she were a different person or if different things happened in her life. That’s how Elly Higgenbottom came about. Elly is Esther when Esther doesn’t want to be herself to new people. Esther’s story portrays the role of women in society in the 1950’s through Esther’s family and friends pushing her to conform to the gender roles of the time.
As one of the most renowned and well-known literary critics in the world of composition, Harold Bloom has self-importantly granted himself the privilege of specifying the reasons as to why we read. From human connection to self-actualization to the acquirement of knowledge, he adheres passionately and unquestionably that “the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure.” Bloom, as an experienced critic, fully recognizes the task of judging a book for its merit.
In the end of the novel, Esther at last, comes to terms with reality. She has got to stop living her life according to what others expect of her. She needs to start living her life for “her”. After Joan commits suicide, Esther believes that unless she turns her life around, she will also commit suicide. Esther saw so much of herself in Joan, that when Joan ended her life she was frightened that she would follow in her footsteps, due to the fact that she had throughout the entire novel. Once Joan was gone, Esther was truly free. The part of Joan that was reflected in Esther vanished. The “bell jar” that had been suffocating her was finally lifted.
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.
Literature is the superlative resource when one is attempting to comprehend or fathom how society has transformed over the centuries. Many written works—whether fictional or nonfictional—express the views of gender roles and societies’ expectations. Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is an exemplary novel that explores these issues. Ester Greenwood was portrayed the superficial and oppressive values of the mid-twentieth century American society through her experiences of gender inequalities and social conformities. Plath’s own life was correspondingly mirrored in this novel; which in turn left the reader aware of the issues in her time period. At the conclusion of The Bell Jar, the audience realizes that she was pushed to completely conform to society.
Esther was the main character in the novel the Bell Jar. Esther faced multiple challenges throughout her life which unfortunately lead to her taking her own life. Sylvia Plath is Esther. Sylvia Plath most popular written novel The Bell Jar creates a theme of someone being viewed as successful but, struggling with their internal feelings. Many believe that poems were the result of her death. Many of her poems would have a dark tone towards it. Plath tends to lean more towards how people treat others and how cruel the world could be. After her most credited novel The Bell Jar Plath’s voice tended to be more aggressive and deep as if she was an expert in the dark side of human nature (Kehoe, 1999).
“Strange Fruit” is one of the famous poems made by Abel Meropol in the 1937. It is briefly discussed about the Civil Right Movement, as it is to highlight the racism against the black people that actually happened in the Southern America. Awareness among people had risen, as they have finally known the problems of racism there. In this poem, Meeropol uses contrast to highlight social contradiction happening in the Southern America with varieties literary techniques that will be discussed in this essay. Moreover, this essay will also analyze the psychological tension in Sylvia Plath’s poem that is “The Arrival of the Bee Box” that is also one of the famous poems about Civil Right Movement that was made in the 1960.
A bell jar is an environment where something is protected or cut off from the outside world. In The Bell Jar, a novel by Sylvia Plath, Esther feels trapped by societal expectations and finds her cut off from the world. She is caught between what she wants and what people expect of her. This conflict proves to be even more difficult when important people surround Esther with their own set of expectations. Only when she fully relinquishes herself from outside pressures is she able to return to a healthy mental state and continue with her life. Esther’s insanity is the natural result of her living in a culture that has ridiculous expectations—about school, marriage, and career—for women.
...which were dead in mothers’ belly, were placed in the bottle. To Esther, this image always linked to abnormal growth, suffocation and death: “The air of the bell jar wadded round me and I couldn’t sir” (p.178). The latter part in the novel, Esther experienced a serious of symbolic events, and she began all over again and was ready to new life. However, what waited for her was still the contradiction that the society put on women, and the value of women could not be totally reflected as before. It could be predicted that in such society-value was distorted like the bell jar, Esther would be probable to fall into the “crisis of roles” and lost the courage for living again. The novel did not describe Esther’s “new born”, anyhow, the “new born” of the author-Sylvia Plath did not last for a long time.
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.
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.
“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.” ( http://thinkexist.com/quotes/sylvia_plath/)
The poetry of Sylvia Plath can be interpreted psychoanalytically. Sigmund Freud believed that the majority of all art was a controlled expression of the unconscious. However, this does not mean that the creation of art is effortless; on the contrary it requires a high degree of sophistication. Works of art like dreams have both a manifest content (what is on the surface) and latent content (the true meaning). Both dreams and art use symbolism and metaphor and thus need to be interpreted to understand the latent content. It is important to maintain that analyzing Plaths poetry is not the same as analyzing Plath; her works stand by themselves and create their own fictional world. In the poems Lady Lazarus, Daddy and Electra on Azalea Path the psychoanalytic motifs of sadomasochism, regression and oral fixation, reperesnet the desire to return to the incestuous love object.