The Bell Jar And Catcher In The Rye Analysis

The loss of a loved one at a young age can cause disruption and irreparable damage to the mind. A child’s mind is pure and innocent and after a tragedy of losing a loved one, the mind is ill-equipped to deal with the loss, which can cause it to spiral out of control. In both the The Bell Jar and The Catcher in the Rye, each author creates a protagonist who loses a family member at an early age which results in a mental illness for each of them. Both authors expose how mental illness can stem from traumatic events occurring in early childhood. Throughout The Bell Jar and The Catcher in the Rye, Plath and Salinger use their protagonists’ to demonstrate the motif of loss of innocence, caused by tragic events in their youth, to teach the reader that buried childhood trauma can have a negative impact on mental health. In The Bell Jar, Plath uses loss of innocence to depict Esther’s declining mental health, not only through her father’s death, but also through other subsequent traumatic experiences. …show more content…
Esther is staying in New York for a month and working as a summer intern for a fashion magazine. During her stay, Constantin, a UN interpreter, invites her to lunch at the UN. During the drive in his convertible, she has a moment of peace and recognizes that, “I felt happier than I had been since I was about nine and running along the hot white beaches with my father the summer before he died” (Plath 74). Since her father’s death, Esther lives in a state of sorrow, however, and at this particular moment, she finally feels a glimpse of happiness. When her father was alive, Esther had a positive male figure in her life and was a happy child, but when he died, loneliness and unhappiness set in. Esther feels the pain and agony of the death of her father, which results in depression and causes her life to spiral out of