The Ending Of The Bell Jar

Slowly declining from the mental strain of school and work and relationships, Esther begins to question her reason for being here, introducing a more obvious form of her mental state, “How could I write about life when I’d never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die?” (Plath 121). Esther realizes that she hasn’t really lived life. During her downfall into depression, she begins to realize that she doesn’t have control over herself and that the future that she envisioned for herself isn’t the future she will in fact

In Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood seems incapable of healthy relationships with other women. She is trapped in a patriarchal society with rigid expectations of womanhood. The cost of transgressing social norms is isolation, institutionalization and a lost identity as woman. The struggle for an individual identity under this regime is enough to drive a person to the verge of suicide. Given the oppressive system under which she must operate, Esther Greenwood's problems with women stem from her conflict between individuality and conformity.

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 The Bell Jar, Esther finds it extremely difficult to put her thoughts into words. She loses friends as she is unable to communicate with them. She lacks relationships due to her silent behaviour. “The silence depresses me. It isn’t the silence of silence. It’s my own silence,” (Plath 18) she says. Although at first Esther feels upset by the lack of connections she has, she loses motivation to even try and explain herself to others. Unlike Mr. Chance in The Cloud Chamber, and Deborah in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Esther’s mental state does not improve, and she is unable to resolve lost connections. Esther’s mother tells her, “the cure for thinking too much about yourself is helping somebody who is worse off than you” (Plath 161). However, in her case, she’s so disconnected from the people who were once a big part of her life, that she doesn’t know who to reach out to. She doesn’t see herself being capable of maintaining stable and happy relationships with others when she can’t even maintain her own happiness.

Esther’s abrupt shift in mood thoroughly captures how the tiniest conditions can have a lasting effect. In The Bell Jar, Plath consistently writes Esther’s character and being as independent, hence, leading Esther to be more on her own with tasks. She does not believe in having other people in her life, solving or controlling anything. Esther’s constant independent characteristic resulted in different desires, passions, and arrangements for her future, than most other people in her life. As Buddy attempted to talk to her about marriage and love, the two always had opposing viewpoints on the matter. “I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a fourth of July rocket”. Plath portrays Esther as wanting trepidation, solely by herself. Not married, or looking after a child. The achievement of having an eternal response on the readers part was high, because the comparison of a fierce independence woman to a rocket made an

Sylvia Plath wrote a captivating novel following a young girl through her battle with mental illness. In her novel, Plath illustrated the extent of prejudice which society exhibited towards people with metal illness in the 1950's. Like Plath, Susanna Kaysen wrote about the effect of mental illness on the patient's lives. Kaysen also revealed how in the 1950's and 1960's, the unwillingness of society to come to terms with the prevalence of mental illness affected the girls diagnosed. Thus Plath and Kaysen brought to light the issues surrounding mental illness and society's negative views towards those who suffer from psychological issues.

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.

Insecurity is a major part of The Bell Jar. You can see Esther minimizing herself based on what men and society thinks. This is a hot topic especially for teen girls. There is always going to be something wrong with your appearance, we are truly never fulfilled with what we have. And for Esther it is not just her that brings herself down it is men. All of her failed relationships led her to believe she was not

Because she is now out of school and introduced to the business world, she is starting to recognize that all of her past successes are meaningless to this bigger community. She is also beginning to realize now that all of the hard work she put into school never made her happy, and is now left questioning what brings her happiness. Esther has always had a plan for her future, and the fact that she’s unsure of it now makes her more terrified than ever. Later in the book, Esther decides to quit her internship, because of her confusion. Since she now has no plan for the future, she sees no reason to stay at the internship, because it’s only making her feel worse. For the remaining summer, she decides to go back home. Just after she arrives home, she receives a letter addressing that she didn’t make it into a writing course she had earlier applied for, for college. Esther was really hoping she would make that writing course, and because of the rejection, it causes her to feel inadequate, and even more depressed about her future. This event causes Esther to isolate herself in her room, away from everyone, and all of her problems. “I crawled back into my bed and pulled the sheet over my head. But even that didn’t shut off the light, so I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night. I couldn’t see the point in getting up. I had nothing to look forward to” (131).

The suicide of Sylvia Plath is still felt today as she died due to the expectations society set on her as a woman in living in the mid 1900s. In her autobiography, Plath creates a character by the name of Esther Greenwood that gets thrown into the loop of life predestined for her by society and feels these expectations pile upon her. Her inability to cope leading up to her suicide attempt turns into a wake up call. The pressures society in the 1950s put on Esther affect her perception of society and cause a decline in her mental health. In the novel, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Esther feels the pressure of society, turns away from the influence of the people closest to her, and struggles with her mental health.

One main theme in The Bell Jar is growth through pain. Esther experiences many painful events that deeply affected her life. For example, Esther stated,” I felt happier than I had been since I was nine and running along the hot white beaches with my father the summer before he died” (p.74). Esther’s inability to move past her father’s death added to her increasing mental illness. Esther had trouble growing up and dealing with normal events that everyone experiences. She takes an entirely different path and decides that she will not act the way society wants. Instead of finding a new meaning in life, she decides to committee suicide instead. Luckily, she is able to fight through these urges, and recover. Her time in the mental hospital was difficult, but she was able to move past her mad thoughts, and start a new life. Esther’s refusal to follow society’s path seems heroic, but her ability to recovery after all her pain was an incredibly dignified act.

Because the method was not implemented correctly, Esther is awake the whole time, feeling the electricity course through her. As her condition worsens, she is placed in a privately funded asylum. She once again undergoes electroshock therapy, but this time it is done correctly, lifting the bell jar off of her. She states that it hangs a few feet above her head. Being under the bell jar is a terrifying experience for Esther. It renders her useless of her greatest skill, writing. It makes her hate essentially everyone and everything that had once meant something to her. It turns her into a hollow shell. She makes an attempt to seem normal and portray the talented girl she has always been, up until then. “How did I know that someday – at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere – the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again” (Plath 241)? Even though

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

In all aspects of the lives we live, normal can not ever be defined as a single idea. If normal is such a thing at all, it is a subjective opinion and can only be defined on an individual level. Everything we interpret is relative to our upbringing and our environment. Not one person had the same upbringing or lived in the same environment as another person for even siblings who have lived together their whole lives have different nurturing experiences. The differentiation between normal and abnormal is a topic of much debate. The meaning of normality varies in many ways such as by person, time, place, situation, culture and set of values. Normality is usually seen as good and desirable by society and what society thinks while abnormality may be seen as bad or undesirable (Boundless).

She stops writing, bathing, changing her clothes, and sleeping. This worries her mother, who sends Esther to a psychiatrist who prescribes her to shock therapy. But instead of having the shock treatment healing Esther, the doctors do the procedure improperly and terrify her, which leads her into a living hell.