Analysis Of The Bell Jar By Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath’s poor mental health, which subsequently lead to her suicide on February 11th 1963, may be seen to be reflected in her novel, ‘The Bell Jar’. Death may be deemed to have a lack of meaning throughout her novel due to the casual manner in which the protagonist and narrator, Esther Greenwood, deals with death. Esther’s father passed away when she was nine years old, and she feels that his death marked the point at which she changed, resulting in her mental health becoming unstable. However, along with her mother, she ‘had never cried for [her] father’s death’ (p.159). This clearly demonstrates how Esther deals with death; it is a necessary part of life, and to Esther, as aforementioned, her mental health has caused her to view death as more desirable than ‘sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in [her] own sour air’ (p. 178). Moreover, Esther’s numerous attempts at suicide remind the reader that Esther believes the only ‘way out’ is death. For example, in Chapter Thirteen, Esther asks her friend Cal, how he would kill

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is rich with an array of motifs, all which serve to sustain the novel’s primary themes. A motif particularly prevalent within the first half of the novel involves food, specifically Esther Greenwood’s relationship with food. This peculiar relationship corroborates the book’s themes of Esther’s continuous rebirthing rituals, and of her extreme dissatisfaction. The interrelation with food functions in two distinct manners: literally and figuratively. This analysis will concentrate on the figurative role of food in The Bell Jar, and how it denotes Esther’s overall state.

During The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath used similes to highlight Esther's characteristic of a wallflower during her trip to New York. After Frankie, one of Lenny's friend abandones Esther, he is forced to take her and Doreen to his apartment. Lenny obviously wanting privacy with Doreen he asks her to go but Doreen defends Esther and says she will only go with the do any of her friend. From there on, Esther feels unwanted and ignored while she spends time at Lenny's place. Plath describes Esther's abandonment while Lenny and Doreen dance, “I felt myself shrinking to a small black dot against all those red and white rugs and that pine paneling. I felt like a hole in the ground” (Plath 16). Esther feels left out while her best friend and a stranger dance. The simile expresses how she felt invisible and ignored. The author tries to relate to the reader who once in their life may have felt outcastes or left out. Esther has a tendency to feel terrible about herself. From the beginning of the story, she explains how she feels different and not in the right place. The author wrote, “The city had faded my tan, though. I looked yellow as a Chinaman. Ordinarily, I would have been nervous a about my dress and my odd color, but being with Doreen made me forget my

The Bell Jar, a coming of age, semi-autobiographical novel, by Sylvia Plath follows the life of a troubled young girl named Esther Greenwood, her slow descent into mental illness and then her subsequent recovery. The second half of the book details Esther's mental breakdown, her incarceration and stumbling recovery whilst the first half uncovers the protagonists, narrators day to day struggles which go on to contribute to her eventual breakdown . Throughout the novel, the reader comes to understand that Esther feels there are few choices; in character a woman must be either the virgin or the whore, both of which are demonstrated by Esther's friends, Betsy and Doreen. This presents one of the key internal conflicts the protagonist, Esther battles.

In her search for identity, Esther often compares herself to others. One sign of depression is the feeling the need to compare yourself to others. Throughout the story, Esther questions other’s morals and characteristics and tries to apply them to herself. One

People's lives are shaped through their success and failure in their personal relationships with each other. The author Sylvia Plath demonstrates this in the novel, The Bell Jar. This is the direct result of the loss of support from a loved one, the lack of support and encouragement, and lack of self confidence and insecurity in Esther's life in the The Bell Jar. It was shaped through her success and failures in her personal relationships between others and herself.

The title Girl, Interrupted “Interrupted at her music: as my life had been, interrupted in the music of being seventeen... What life could recover from that?” refers to the painting as she sees it as a distillation of her own experience. Just like the girl in the painting was interrupted so was Susanna and for two years she was unable to live the life that she wanted to. The Bell Jar is a metaphor used by Sylvia Plath to show that Esther is trapped inside her own head and is unable to escape the doubtful and insecure thoughts she has. It is also used as a metaphor for society as people are unable to escape from the expectation which society puts upon them.

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.

Esther evidently feels as if she is constantly being judged and tested, although in fact she is not. Her magnified sense of distrust is illustrated repeatedly throughout the course of the book, at once involving the reader and developing her own characteristic response to unique situations. Finally, one who views occurrences which can only be categorized as coincidental as being planned often experiences a suspicious response. When she finds out that an acquaintance from high school is at the same hospital, her first reaction is wariness: "It occurred to me that Joan, hearing where I was, had engaged the room at the asylum on pretence, simply as a joke." (Plath 207). Although the reader is incredulous of the protagonist's manner of thought, it is also possible to feel a connection to the situation. Such a

Esther is experiencing repression because she is fighting the two different thoughts in her mind. Her state of repression is leading her to become depress.

Esther’s mother and society’s expectation as a woman, which is to be a good wife and a mother, suffocate and demoralize Esther’s dream as a professional writer. Esther’s mother wants her to “...learn shorthand after college, so I’d have a practical skill as well as a college degree” (Plath 40). Her mother believes that Esther cannot further advance her education as a writer and simply wants her to be a secretary since professional career for women was uncommon and discouraged because it disturbs the role as a married woman. These pressures often obliged her to fall into the societal expectations, to give up her higher education, and to marry somebody. However, she knew that the marriage and the babies were not for her, “because cook and clean and wash were just about

The Bell Jar was written by Sylvia Plath and published in Britain under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas in January 1963, merely a few weeks before her suicide. In summer of 1953, Plath was awarded a summer as a guest editor at the women’s magazine Mademoiselle, and her internship in New York City would ultimately inspire Plath to write The Bell Jar. The novel lightly fictionalized Plath’s life under the facade of Esther Greenwood, right down to the method of her failed suicide attempt and extensive shock therapy. For instance, in Chapter 10, Esther decides to write a novel and states: “My Heroine would be myself, only in disguise.”

It is evident that she is painfully aware of her approaching melancholic depression as evidenced by her opening statement, “I knew something was wrong with me that summer” and later, "I 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, 1971). Throughout the novel, Esther holds the wits and self-awareness to know something is or has been stewing within, while simultaneously having a skewed perception of the world around her. Feelings of helplessness and entrapment are illustrated by the metaphor Esther has created “The bell jar” that suggests she has lost control of herself. Esther describes the bell jar as a symbolic meaning of the lenses in which she see’s life through; a trapped space where she lives in “her own sour air”, separated from the world

The Bell Jar is a novel written in, 1963 written by Sylvia Plath. It is a story about a girl who under goes many traumatic life events that had the destiny to make or break her. The things she used to enjoy in life are no longer bringing joy to her life. She can’t find anything that gives her the will to go on. The Bell Jar is a story that will take reader on a journey with a girl who lets the gender roles of 1950s get the best of her. She lets people tell her what she can and cannot do and loses what it means to become your own person. The Bell Jar teaches the audience about the expectations, opportunities or restrictions on American Women in the 1950’s. As gender roles have become more diverse between a man and a woman, it is still more

Perhaps the most famous work of Sylvia Plath’s is The Bell Jar -- a book that follows the mental deterioration of a nineteen-year-old girl named Esther through the narration of Esther herself. Although Sylvia Plath hated life in general and committed suicide at the age of 32 after her husband left her, the myriad autobiographical elements, metaphors, and motifs that appear throughout her works produce a beautifully vivid representation of people, the world, and life itself (“Sylvia Plath”).