The Bell Jar is a classic story of feminism in the mid 1900s. Esther Greenwood goes through periods of severe depression, happiness, and boredom. The reader watches her develop as she learns what’s really important in life.
The book starts off with Esther working for a New York magazine, where she excels. The problem is that she doesn't fit in with the eleven other girls, causing her to distance herself. Spending a month on the job, she learned a lot about friendship, but she also realized that she didn't know what to do after college. After getting food poisoning in New York, Esther spends the summer with her mother. During this time, she began to lose most motivation for writing, and is soon unable to sleep. When the psychiatrist he mother …show more content…
She tried to kill herself several times, all of which failed. She was eventually found in a basement, unconscious after overdosing on sleeping pills. This brought her to the hospital where she found the psychiatrist that could actually help her get better. Dr. Nolan helped Esther improve, but she remained in the hospital. The doctors granted her permission to leave the hospital from time to time, and Esther, ever so eager to lose her virginity, finally found someone to lose it to. She lost it to a man named Irwin, but she started bleeding and had to return to the hospital. Soon after that, her friend Joan hung herself. The two girls had a lot in common and they connected over that. Both of them had rough pasts with depression and suicide attempts. It appeared from the outside that Joan was improving, so her friends and family were surprised when she hung herself. Esther attended the funeral and was later released from the mental hospital to return to college. She had improved greatly from the dark hold of depression, but she knew that the madness could set in at any …show more content…
She is torn between her rebellious and spontaneous Doreen and her more quiet and practical friend Betsy. I connect to this because this is high school, and most kids are trying to figure out what impression they want to make on others. They don't know who they want to be or what they need to do to get there. I think that these two situations relate to each other because Esther is trying to find herself in other people, and that happens a lot in high school. I also connect to Esther because sometimes she was pressured into doing things she didn't want to do by her friends because they ‘wanted her to be more social.’ I understand this because a lot of times, the people around me try to put pressure on me or others to do something with them or do a boring activity. I can connect to the time period simply because there is still oppression of women today, like the wage gap or women being discriminated against, just because they are
The book starts off with Esther working for a New York magazine, where she excels. The problem is that she doesn't fit in with the eleven other girls, causing her to distance herself. Spending a month on the job, she learned a lot about friendship, but she also realized that she didn't know what to do after college. After getting food poisoning in New York, Esther spends the summer with her mother. During this time, she began to lose most motivation for writing, and is soon unable to sleep. When the psychiatrist he mother …show more content…
She tried to kill herself several times, all of which failed. She was eventually found in a basement, unconscious after overdosing on sleeping pills. This brought her to the hospital where she found the psychiatrist that could actually help her get better. Dr. Nolan helped Esther improve, but she remained in the hospital. The doctors granted her permission to leave the hospital from time to time, and Esther, ever so eager to lose her virginity, finally found someone to lose it to. She lost it to a man named Irwin, but she started bleeding and had to return to the hospital. Soon after that, her friend Joan hung herself. The two girls had a lot in common and they connected over that. Both of them had rough pasts with depression and suicide attempts. It appeared from the outside that Joan was improving, so her friends and family were surprised when she hung herself. Esther attended the funeral and was later released from the mental hospital to return to college. She had improved greatly from the dark hold of depression, but she knew that the madness could set in at any …show more content…
She is torn between her rebellious and spontaneous Doreen and her more quiet and practical friend Betsy. I connect to this because this is high school, and most kids are trying to figure out what impression they want to make on others. They don't know who they want to be or what they need to do to get there. I think that these two situations relate to each other because Esther is trying to find herself in other people, and that happens a lot in high school. I also connect to Esther because sometimes she was pressured into doing things she didn't want to do by her friends because they ‘wanted her to be more social.’ I understand this because a lot of times, the people around me try to put pressure on me or others to do something with them or do a boring activity. I can connect to the time period simply because there is still oppression of women today, like the wage gap or women being discriminated against, just because they are