When Esther put her arm around Michael, he didn’t fight her. “Esther who hadn’t embraced anyone in years, gently put her arm around his shoulders.” “I am so sorry, Michael. Oh, you must hate me.” Michael sensed a familiar smell.…
After battling with her health for a couple of days Esther was driven to the hospital in an ambulance and was immediately placed in the ICU. All through the night Esther struggled to contain herself from the cancer that was consuming her, but she couldn’t, with one final breath Esther passed away. And so Esther’s Living story ended At 3:00 P.M. August 25, 2010 when Esther was too weak to continue with her battle against cancer, so the cancer in which her lungs were made out of took control and directed Esther to new and better place’s. This is the last and final emotion I will share with you from this book, sadness. This part in the book was so sad that I couldn’t help but feel a deep connection with the characters at this moment.…
Plath’s poetry here, could be related to image of the “bell jar” by her contemporary researcher. The same stifling environment. Esther Greenwood, another of Plath’s heroines in her autobiographical novel , that narrates Plath’s twentieth year of her life, feels as though she is trapped “blank and stopped as a dead baby” (1972; 265). This image reminds one of the bottled foetus preserved in the laboratories. By the end of the poem, the mother is stripped of all humanity, when the speaker persona states; Ghastly Vatican.…
Esther sees the world around her in a critical, pessimistic tone. In the mind of this character, everything in the world is threatening and out to get her. Scenes described by other authors as peaceful and serene, but all Esther is capable of seeing is an ominous surrounding. When Esther is caught in the rain, a scene typically romanticized by writers, she describes the rain as coming “down from the sky in drops the size of coffee saucers and hit the hot sidewalks with a hiss that sent clouds of steam writhing up from the gleaming, dark concrete…” (Plath) Words such as “hiss” and “writhing” create imagery that is dark and threatening.…
One integral metaphor within The Bell Jar is that of the fig tree, which Esther uses to describe her life. She envisions her life as a fig tree spreading out its branches into various futures she could have. One branch symbolizes what society expects of her: to have a husband, children, and a “happy home” (Plath 84). Other branches symbolize a combination of what society expects of her and what she expects of herself: to be a “famous poet,” a “brilliant professor,” or an “amazing editor” (Plath 84-85). Lastly, other branches reflect her innermost desires that will only please herself: to travel, have “a pack of…lovers with queer names and offbeat professions” and to be an Olympian (Plath 85).…
The protagonist in The Bell Jar is Esther Greenwood. Esther is a young woman who loves to write, is strong on her beliefs, and struggles with the ups and downs of life. I believe Esther’s main motivation is to stay alive in order to experience the good parts of life. Although she struggles with depression and anxiety, she still dreams of a happy life. I admire her for many reasons.…
(Lit Charts) Esther doesn’t seem to recognize her own accomplishments. In my opinion that is exactly how Sylvia Plath, the author, was. No matter what she accomplished she was stuck in her own depression and didn’t see how amazing of a writer she truly was. She was focused on what she was not more than what she was. She once felt very ambitious and had a plan and now she looks at herself as unmotivated and unsure about her own future, just as Plath herself.…
Parallel this moment with how she not only needed to find someone worthy enough to seduce her, but Esther craved someone she also deemed worthy enough to listen to her. Female sexuality is something to be discreet about, like opening a female hygiene product in a public bathroom. Even though everyone knows a menstrual cycle is inevitable the…
Electroshock Therapy is a treatment option for patients with depression that induces surges of electricity that cause small seizures in the brain. Despite an 80% success rate, this method, when used incorrectly, has the potential to incapacitate patients, worsening their condition. One of the few unlucky people whose life was drastically changed bythe inadequate application of this treatment was Sylvia Plath. Shaping American feminism and contemporary poetry, Sylvia Plath is one of the most renowned and appreciated poets of her time (“Blackberrying” 28). Though Plath was largely recognized for her poetry, she also wrote a novel.…
Furthermore, the title is an extended metaphor of her suffocation from relationships and work which prevents her from connecting with the people around her. A bell jar is an inverted glass jar used to protect and display delicate objects or to maintain a vacuum. But for Esther, the bell jar symbolizes madness. “...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” (178) - She feels as if she is inside an airless jar that changes her perspective on the world because no matter where she goes, she is trapped.…
Sylvia Plath was a well-known American poet. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she grew up to be a straight-A student in school and published her first poem at the age of eight. Sylvia was a very bright student growing up and she was very popular. “I think I would like to call myself ‘the girl who wanted to be God’” (Barnard 15).…
Neither her mother or her father there to provide emotional stability. However, her father died at a young age and neither her and her mother dealt with the grief. Per se my health psychology text, grief is the psychological response to bereavement, a feeling of hollowness, often marked by preoccupation with the image of the deceased person, just as Esther does. “Esther’s father was the patriarch of the family; in confronting his grave she confronts all of the different pressures she feels from life and the patriarchy.” The domesticated wilderness: Patriarchal Oppression in The Bell Jar by Allison Wilkins.…
Pressure on Women in the 1950s Can Lead to Depression In the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath the nineteen-year-old college student, Esther, wins guest editorship at a fashion magazine called Ladies’ Day. Although she seems to be living her dreams in New York, her plans unexpectedly change. Plath uses the magazine, relationships with men, friends, marriage, and her mother to illustrate that social pressure on women in the 1950s could lead to depression. Plath shows how Esther’s job at Ladies’ Day, the magazine company, puts pressure on her as a worker and causes her to question her future in the workplace. In Jennifer Dunn’s article, “Literary Contexts in Novels: Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Bell Jar’”, she states, “The magazine’s editor, the dynamic ‘Jay…
At it’s core, The Bell Jar serves to challenge the social norms of the 1950s, and challenges the prevailing notion that women were dependent on and inferior to men. Esther struggles with the expectation that she should abandon her hopes and dreams for motherhood and a career in domestic duties. The novel also questions the idea that motherhood is the ultimate in femininity through grotesque images of pregnancy and birth, Esther sees the birthing room as a oubliette describing the birthing bed as “some awful torture table”. Esther notices that her worth is based on her ability to have children: “You oughtn 't see this,” Will muttered in my ear. “You 'll never want to have a baby if you do.…
Esther’s desire is to be perfect although she wants…