A young woman searching for her very own identity in a society where basic values are less likely to be tampered with. In "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath, she faces horrific mental, physical, and emotional breakdowns throughout her life to figure out her purpose. Esther Greenwood's dreams and aspirations are smothered by her demanding environment and impinging madness. Esther is probable to fall into a crisis or two and lose her courage to live life.
In "The Bell Jar", Esther seeks out crisis situations (almost always purposely) where she puts her life on the line. A young woman as herself is only trying to find her true identity and to establish a clearer perspective from which to view herself and the world she is living in. Plath states, "So poor she can't afford a magazine, and then gets a scholarship to college and wins a prize here and a prize there and ends up steering New York like her own private car... I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn't get myself to react," (Plath, Chapter 1). This description of Esther's discontent with everyone else around her shows that even after beating the odds of coming from her background, she feels no different. She does not find …show more content…
One aspect of Esther's depression is that she feels paralyzed, unable to act at times: "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story from the tip of every branch...I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose," (Plath, Chapter 7). Therefore, the fig tree is a representation of all the possibilities that she can act on, but she can't muster up the initiative to pursue. Both personal difficulties and the problems of being an intelligent woman plague Esther and fan the flames of her mental
In "The Bell Jar", Esther seeks out crisis situations (almost always purposely) where she puts her life on the line. A young woman as herself is only trying to find her true identity and to establish a clearer perspective from which to view herself and the world she is living in. Plath states, "So poor she can't afford a magazine, and then gets a scholarship to college and wins a prize here and a prize there and ends up steering New York like her own private car... I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn't get myself to react," (Plath, Chapter 1). This description of Esther's discontent with everyone else around her shows that even after beating the odds of coming from her background, she feels no different. She does not find …show more content…
One aspect of Esther's depression is that she feels paralyzed, unable to act at times: "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story from the tip of every branch...I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose," (Plath, Chapter 7). Therefore, the fig tree is a representation of all the possibilities that she can act on, but she can't muster up the initiative to pursue. Both personal difficulties and the problems of being an intelligent woman plague Esther and fan the flames of her mental