Depression And Suicide In Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel “The Bell Jar”, briefs the story of an amazing, gifted poet, Esther Greenwood, whose falling apart piece by piece due to the pressure of society. Throughout the novel Esther gave many signs on how she's slowly falling apart. When working for the Ladies’ Day magazine in New York, Esther develops a mental illness. An illness that makes her unable to sleep then leads to her not being able to read and write. She then tries to commit suicide multiple times due to the lack of knowing who she is and stress that keeps piling on her. Plath argues that the struggle of finding an identity leads to having depression and committing suicide. A device Plath uses to emphasize that depression and suicide is an outcome of how it’s a struggle to find an …show more content…
While she’s in New York with the other girls who were “excited” she cant help but to feel empty. Esther wants to feel something but she couldn't “react” the same as the others. She cant control how she feels. Just like the tornado, Esther feels “empty” and numb. It’s like she's moving through the “hullabaloo,” (the commotion) “empty” and numb, destroying everything in her way. Since this is the beginning of her losing her identity, in the matter of time she's going to fall into to a depression and start feeling like she doesn't want to live anymore. Additionally, the tittle Plath uses would be consider a metaphor. The tittle “The Bell Jar” would be consider to be a metaphor because it shows that Esther is stuck and has nowhere to go. Esther is stuck in a “bell jar.” This mental illness that took over her life is keeping her locked up in captivity. Its taken over her life. She's trapped with depression and her thoughts cant escape her. This “bell jar” is keeping her from meeting new people and having the time of her life. This leads to not being able to have her own identity which leads to trying to take her life away. In addition, she states