Mary Bell

It is popularly said that movies reflect life. Directors and writers of movie production usually aim to send some form of message to their audience that may be adhere to the political, social, economic, or moral aspects of modern life. Some of these movies directly refer to modern events and entangle them into the plot of the movie. This event or policy usually directly affects the main character. This is reflected in the movie Saw VI, directed by Kevin Greutert in 2009. Saw VI reflects a real…

Biography Mary Higgins Clark, a bestselling author of mystery and suspense books, was born in the Bronx, New York on December 24, 1927. Clark had published her first short story in 1956 but decided to try her hand at books in 1964 when she became windowed with five children to look after. Where Are the Children?, her first suspense novel, became an instant bestseller. After her father died, Clark became a secretary to help support the family after graduating from high school. Then she spent…

A Bell Jar with a tight lid As easy as it is for some individuals to go their lives knowing exactly who they are, some people go their whole life trying to find themselves. The journey to self-discovery is present in The Bell Jar, for the novel focuses on the narrator, Esther Greenwood as she struggles to find herself. Through the skillful use of various literary devices, the author, Sylvia Plath, presents the theme of identity in the novel. The first introduction of Esther’s lack of…

Trances and Dreams Complicating Desire & Blackness in Jean Toomer’s “Esther” Jean Toomer’s “Esther” is a bildungsroman text that follows the light skinned protagonist, Esther, through four distinct ages in three chapters. “Esther” is full of magical realism coupled with female desire which is often expressed through dreams, visions, and color. From the beginning, the reader can contrast Esther with Karintha, Louisa and other female characters in Cane. Esther is not desired by white or black…

1960s when Sylvia Plath penned The Bell Jar. In the essence of her book Plath shows the already present gap between someone's mind and their body and how depression, or any mental illness, can widen the space even further. Symbolism pertaining to the gap is described when main character Esther Greenwood uses objects and metaphors as representations of her depression. The story follows Esther from the onset of her illness all the way to her recovery. In The Bell Jar the struggle of mind vs body…

The “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath is a novel about a girl named Esther Greenwood. The novels setting first begins in New York City. There Esther and eleven other girls works for a fashion magazine. A flash back to college is seen when Esther tell about how when she dated a man like her age named Buddy Willard. Esther believed that Buddy and his family was great but later she feels betrayed by Buddy when Esther ask and Buddy says yes, this scares Esther since she has never been intimate with…

Sylvia Plath established a brilliant academic record and exhibited talent both as an artist and as a writer, publishing her first short story in Seventeen magazine soon after finishing high school. Her academic and literary successes continued after her admission to Smith College in the fall of 1950. The recipient of several prestigious scholarships, she performed impressively in her college courses and published her works in several national magazines, earning, among other accolades, a summer…

The poem “Tulips” was written after her stay at a mental health treatment center for a suicide attempt, which was also the basis for her only novel, “The Bell Jar.” The poem goes into more depth about how the hospital made her feel free from her life and troubles until the ‘tulips’ are made present in the story. The feeling of freedom is from the distance away from her distant and unloving husband, while…

In the following novels, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, the stories are both told in the past about important parts in the narrator’s lives. The central characters in both novels are having a hard time in the search for their own identities. In The Bell Jar, the narrator, Esther Greenwood, is very unstable and has a hard time finding herself due to intrinsic problems. In Breakfast At Tiffany’s, the central character, Holly Golightly, is having trouble…

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…