How Much Should the Author’s Life be Known
Authors Sylvia Plath of “The Bell Jar” and Justin Torres of “We the Animals” both incorporated many of their personal life events and struggles into their debut novels. By incorporating their hardships into their literary work, the two books provide an extensive look into both of the author 's frustration and fanciful imagination. In “The Bell Jar”, the protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is first described as a studious girl who, through her education, was granted a summer magazine internship to New York City. Instead of using this opportunity to network and grow as a writer, Esther begins to fall into an increasingly severe depression. She is constantly plagues by her repressed sexuality which forces …show more content…
The first two failed attempts was by trying to drown herself and the other by attempting to hang herself. Each time she wasn 't able to kill herself she described it as her body betrayed her “Then I saw that my body had all sorts of little tricks, such as making my hands go limp at the crucial second, which would save it time and time again ”(Plath, 159). Many viewed these previous attempts as cried for attention and not really trying to kill herself. In actuality these are just constant signs that she is mentally il and needs proper treatmeant. The author of the novel also had previous failed suicide attempts. One of Plath’s attempt to end her life mirrors the way the protagonist Esther almost identically. They both overdosed on sleeping pills and passed out in their mother’s crawl space for three days. It was for both the author and the character, the reason they were admitted to a mental institution and treated with electroshock therapy. Because the scene is so similar to the one that the author faces it gives the book a more macabre feel to it. The blanks thoughts the character feels before swallowing those pills and then waking up in a hospital could be the very same thing that Plath felt. And we know this because in the foreword written by Frances McCullough, he describes how during the last years of her life she was …show more content…
From the beginning of the novel, the narrator seen himself as part of the pack of three brothers. The first line “We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots (Torres, 1). The uses of we and the way the brothers fight with one another shows their strong brotherhood. Even during their fights and hardships they always knew that they would protect each other, especially the narrator since as the novel progresses the reader 's sense that he is more docile than his brothers. At the end of the novel the narrator 's homosexuality is revealed in a mortifying way. His family discovers his journal of twisted perverted fantasies that concern them to the point that, like “The Bell Jar”, they send him to a mental institution. The scene reflects the authors similar experience in his life where he was outed by his family when they read his journal. And like both the narrator and the author, when they found out that their journal was read they wreaked havoc and began to throw objects and basically have a mental
Authors Sylvia Plath of “The Bell Jar” and Justin Torres of “We the Animals” both incorporated many of their personal life events and struggles into their debut novels. By incorporating their hardships into their literary work, the two books provide an extensive look into both of the author 's frustration and fanciful imagination. In “The Bell Jar”, the protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is first described as a studious girl who, through her education, was granted a summer magazine internship to New York City. Instead of using this opportunity to network and grow as a writer, Esther begins to fall into an increasingly severe depression. She is constantly plagues by her repressed sexuality which forces …show more content…
The first two failed attempts was by trying to drown herself and the other by attempting to hang herself. Each time she wasn 't able to kill herself she described it as her body betrayed her “Then I saw that my body had all sorts of little tricks, such as making my hands go limp at the crucial second, which would save it time and time again ”(Plath, 159). Many viewed these previous attempts as cried for attention and not really trying to kill herself. In actuality these are just constant signs that she is mentally il and needs proper treatmeant. The author of the novel also had previous failed suicide attempts. One of Plath’s attempt to end her life mirrors the way the protagonist Esther almost identically. They both overdosed on sleeping pills and passed out in their mother’s crawl space for three days. It was for both the author and the character, the reason they were admitted to a mental institution and treated with electroshock therapy. Because the scene is so similar to the one that the author faces it gives the book a more macabre feel to it. The blanks thoughts the character feels before swallowing those pills and then waking up in a hospital could be the very same thing that Plath felt. And we know this because in the foreword written by Frances McCullough, he describes how during the last years of her life she was …show more content…
From the beginning of the novel, the narrator seen himself as part of the pack of three brothers. The first line “We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots (Torres, 1). The uses of we and the way the brothers fight with one another shows their strong brotherhood. Even during their fights and hardships they always knew that they would protect each other, especially the narrator since as the novel progresses the reader 's sense that he is more docile than his brothers. At the end of the novel the narrator 's homosexuality is revealed in a mortifying way. His family discovers his journal of twisted perverted fantasies that concern them to the point that, like “The Bell Jar”, they send him to a mental institution. The scene reflects the authors similar experience in his life where he was outed by his family when they read his journal. And like both the narrator and the author, when they found out that their journal was read they wreaked havoc and began to throw objects and basically have a mental