The Bell Jar, By Sylvia Plath

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

This feeling originates from the fact that she is unable to conform to one of the ways in which to pursue her life. All throughout the novel Esther battles the pressure put on her and women generally by society to bear children and focus on family life with her wish to dedicate herself to her writing hence going in a more academic direction. This oppression by society feeds her feelings of alienation: “...it wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.” (Plath The Bell Jar) Plath uses the symbol of the bell jar in order to illustrate Esther’s personal prison. Esther is held captive beneath the bell jar. She is trapped beneath it and unable to escape just like she is trapped beneath the expectations of society. The bell jar is Esther’s own metaphor used to illustrate what she’s feeling in her day-to-day life, and the descent into mental illness. Regardless of what she’s doing or where she is, she sits alienated “under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.” Although her personal prison, the bell jar, is transparent, allowing her to view the world around her, the image she’s met with is distorted. This subsequently leads to

Sylvia Plath uses this quote in The Bell Jar to show the main character Esther Greenwood struggles. The quote states as followed,“There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It 's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction--every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it 's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and excitement at about a million miles an hour”(Plath 110). Plath uses this quote to encapsulate the true feelings of the main character and her struggles with social conformity. It is obvious that Esther Greenwood is directly inspired by Plath herself. The many similarities include their pseudonyms, the absence of a father, their young age, and their high level of intelligence. The only major difference is Esther’s suicide attempt was fortunately unsuccessful while Sylvia Plath’s was unfortunately successful. Plath committed suicide at the age of thirty due to her major struggles of conforming to society. Sylvia Plath In The Bell Jar, the author, Sylvia Plath, uses metaphors, symbolism, and tone to draw attention to the main characters journey through mental illness and her struggle to relate to the feminist expectations of society.

Plath and Sharrock actively portray that while being remote and withdrawn from life one cannot develop growth skills to overcome struggles through the use of symbolism, while Plath further raises this through implementing a motif. Both the author and director use symbolism to show the audience that both characters become isolated. Plath utilised the “bell jar” to symbolise that Esther is gripped by the insanity in her mind that is inescapable, compelling her to disengage from those around her and causes her loneliness. Plath explored this further [VB1] as Esther became isolated through her mental breakdowns as during these periods she did not want to get out of bed as the “air of the bell jar wadded around her.” She would be sitting alienated “under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.” Demonstrating to the audience that although Esther can view the world, her perspective is distorted as the glass jar prevents her from realistically perceiving life and the society [VB2] around her. Ultimately, this begins to cause Esther’s mental stability to diminish as she feels as though she does not belong in the world. Positioning the audience to understand that Esther has struggled to find herself through her battle and therefore becomes paralysed within her body. Plath further conveys this message as Esther felt that “the world itself is the bad dream” illustrating to the audience that she is living in a constant nightmare of her life and is unable to forget her past. Consequently it is the world that ostracises her, controlling her and her emotions. Sharrock also highlighted the same message through utilising[VB3] Will’s wheelchair, symbolising his restrictions which induced his seclusion from the world due to his confinement in a

One is often enticed to read a novel because of the way in which the characters are viewed and the way in which characters view their surroundings. In the novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Esther Greenwood is a character whose "heightened and highly emotional response to events, actions and sentiments" (Assignment sheet) intrigue the reader. One of her character traits is extreme paranoia that is shown in different situations throughout the novel. As a result of this, she allows herself to be easily let down, as she believes that all events that are unsatisfactory are directed towards her. Finally, it is clear that she attempts to escape this notion by imagining an idyllic yet impossible life that she

own, Plath had dealt with years of depression, deeply rooted in her strong ambition to be perfect and successful. This part of her character is not something she tried to hide, and one friend even described Sylvia as having had “a sort of natural excellence at whatever she turned her hand to. If she wrote an essay it was effortlessly good… her very remarkable efficiency was also very natural to her and was never accompanied by any sense of strain” (Wagner-Martin 141). Plath strived to seem naturally perfect, and this description easily translated into the character of Esther Greenwood, who is the main character of the novel and whom readers follow along on her journey to insanity.

For example, the storyline with Buddy Willard and his desire to marry Esther after recovering from tuberculosis had no basis in Plath’s life, and she had no experience with a horrific blind date with a man who attempted to rape her like Marco attempted to do to Esther. Some details stayed the same, especially regarding the break in Esther’s sanity towards the end of the novel. In 1953, after returning from Manhattan on her internship, Plath “suffered a breakdown… [attempting] suicide and then spent the fall [engaging] in psychiatric therapy” (Satterfield 24) just as Esther returned to her home and tried to kill herself within the story. Esther’s suicide attempt was brought on by her depression that stemmed from rejection from a college writing course. This led to prescribed electroshock therapy that did not ameliorate her condition at all. In The Bell Jar, the therapy was described as “a great jolt till [Esther] thought [her] bones would break and the sap [fly] out of her like a great spirit” (“The Bell Jar” 143). This was directly drawn from Plath’s own experience with “bi-polar electroconvulsive shock treatments as an outpatient” (Wagner-Martin 1) that she went through in early 1953. Plath knew how the shock treatment felt, having experienced it herself, and this added to the realistic aspects of Esther’s character and the events she goes through within the story. Plath’s own personal experience as a young girl going through painful treatments helped illustrate Esther’s fear and pain as a shock patient. Since these treatments did not work, however, Plath attempted suicide later in 1953. Both Plath and her character attempted suicide in the same manner as well: by hiding inside a crawl space and overdosing on sleeping pills. The experience in The Bell Jar is described very sparingly, with Esther

While Doreen is having fun with Lenny she just watches and is unable to fit in. She does not enjoy herself as she says, “I felt myself shrinking to a small black dot against all those all those red and white rugs and that pine paneling, I felt life a hole in the ground” (Plath, 16). She doesn't feel like she is able to fit in. She is very lonely and seeing Doreen with Lenny is making her loneliness worse. Plath uses great imagery of red and white rugs and how one cannot tell when there is an unusual small dot in it. Esther relates it to her life and how she feels like she is unrecognizable. Moreover, the color black represents darkness which Esther is experiencing. She also uses a simile comparing herself to a hole. A hole is something negative often used to represent difficulty. In a hole is nothing but darkness and when looking at her life, Esther feels as though she is

While Esther feels trapped within her own thoughts, unable to escape regardless of what goes on in her surroundings; people around her often cannot truly understand the extent of the depression inside her head. Her mother is one person in particular who will never understand what is going on in her daughter’s head. Near the end of Esther’s time at a psychiatric hospital, her mother wishes to treat the whole experience as a bad dream, but Esther knows otherwise. To Esther, she says, “But under the deceptively clean and level slate the topography was the same…” (Plath 236).

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

The book The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath follows a girl named Esther Greenwood. She is in college and she goes to New York on an internship. The only problem is she doesn’t feel like she is going anywhere in her life. She is worried about what she going to do after college and on the last night in New York she decides to go on a blind date with a man who ends up trying to rape her. Later her boyfriend, Billy Willard, decides that when he gets better from tuberculosis that he wants to marry Esther. The only problem with that is he cheated on her while they were dating and she felt like she couldn’t marry him. Esther becomes very depressed and she wakes up in a hospital after surviving a suicide attempt. After that she gets admitted to a mental hospital and then gets moved to a private hospital and starts to get better.

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the definition of the word “bell jar” is, “a bell-shaped usually glass vessel designed to contain objects or preserve gases and or a vacuum”. Sylvia Plath’s title, The Bell Jar, symbolically represents her feeling towards the seclusion and inferiority women endured trapped by societes glass vessel during the 1950’s. The Bell Jar, follows the life of Esther Greenwood, the protagonist and narrator of the story, during her desperate attempt to become a woman. For the most part, Esther begins her life at college with lots of success, earning a scholarship and an internship to a fashion magazine corporation. However, Esther’s success is short lived and it begins to fade as she faces increasing pressures from the outside world. Eventually, Esther loses her internship and scholarship money pursuing relationships rather than focusing on her career and studies. Enthusiastically, Esther decides to move back in with her mother, but is then notified that she has been denied entry into her dream summer writing program. Losing her opportunity to participate in the writing program drives Esther into a deep depression, where she attempts suicide via overdose on her mother’s sleeping pills. In light of Esther’s cleverness to hide her body away, the police still find Esther in time and admit her into a psychiatric ward for rehabilitation. After a couple of months with insulin-electroshock therapy sessions administered by Doctor Nolan, Esther

The Bell Jar was published in the UK under a pseudonym, one month before Plath’s suicide in 1963. It is the only novel she ever published. It follows the life of Esther Greenwood, a troubled young woman from suburban Boston. Esther is an intelligent teenager and was given an editorial internship for a magazine in New York City as a result of her academic ability. Regardless of her potential and determination, Esther appears secluded from society and demoralised about her future. These early symptoms described to us from the beginning of the novel are foreshadowing her later suicidal depression. She feels pressured in conforming to the social expectations found of women in 1950’s America. For example, a young woman was expected to stay a virgin

Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston Massachusetts and died on February 11, 1963. She married a British poet named Ted Hughes and had two children, but heir relationship later ended in a divorce. She was a troubled but gifted poet; her love for poetry started at a young age because she kept a journal. Plath was accepted into Smith College once some of her works were published. She spent time in New York working for Mademoiselle magazine as a guest editor. She tried to kill herself by taking sleeping pills, but later recovered in a mental hospital. Her husband left her another woman in 1962; she fell into depression. While she was struggling with her illness, she wrote The Bell Jar. She also wrote a collection of poems they were

Sylvia Plath uses many literary devices to convey her purpose in The Bell Jar such as symbolism. The Bell Jar itself is used as symbolic representation of the emotional state Esther is in. The glass jar distorts her image of the world as she feels trapped under the glass. It represents mental illness; a confining jar that descends over her mind and doesn’t allow her to live and think freely. Symbols of life and death pervade The Bell Jar. Esther experiences psychological distress which is a major motif in the novel. The death of Esther’s father and the relationship with her mother is a possible reason for her illness. Sylvia Plath expresses the difficulties Esther faces and parallels her struggle with depression and illustrates it using various symbols such as a fig tree, mirrors, beating heart and a bell jar throughout the novel.