The Bell jar

In a timeless tale of a young woman journey to find herself and her place on this earth, Sylvia Plath is known for exploring the story in an almost biographical fashion (her father died just like Esther, and She committed suicide just like Esther attempted) . Throughout the story Sylvia uses Limited narration, Similes, and metaphors to show the thought process the insane Esther is challenged to go through.

The story is told in a way which puts you in her brain throughout the whole story, when her brain has lost interest in a subject or gets distracted you can see that as she runs off on tangents. And you never really get the other side of any story here, its completly based on her observation. However you do get the inside scoop on every other character and see them as she sees them.One example would be in a paragraph where esther lays out the tension between Doreen and Betsy she quickly states "Betsy was always asking me to do things with her and the other girls as if she were trying to save me in some way. She never asked Doreen" in the following paragraph Betsy asks Esther to join her cab, and esther declines because she knows how doreen feels about it. Another example of how she unfolds the story for us would be at the end of chapter 7 she tells Constantin that Buddy broke her leg. To the reader that is such a random piece of information but by the end of chapter 8 you realize she has just shared the story of how buddy broke her leg and that she is telling the entire story in a scrambled manner. Towards the end she ends up in a hospital because of her state of mind and suicide attempts, there is one particular part where the nurse specifically asks her not to look in the mirror and of course esther did. When she looked in the mirror she didnt even recognize herself, until she cracked a smile. then the book says "I listened to her with mild interest. Anybody could drop a mirror i didnt see why they should get so stirred up." Not only did she break the mirror in such a calm manner but she didnt understand that it wasnt normal? So the thought process of this woman is mind boggleing.

Sylvia is apparently very fond of similies because even in the first few chapters she uses them so much. In the second chapter she says "His boots echoed like pistol shots." She also uses sentances like "Evaporated like the tail end of a dream" or her description of alchohol "but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers sword and made me feel powerful and godlike." I think that the main character being a professional writer, her brain is expected to think like this kind of analysing everything using images and descriptive language to show the reader what there getting at.

And finally metaphors. This book seems like it has a lot of uncovered metaphors because her brain is everywhere. Throughout the book esther talks about marriage, sex, children, household things a woman of her time would be expected to want. (her mom was a child during WW1 we know this because esther tells us as she explains her mom speaking german 1914-18, so the time esther is in now should be around the 1950s). It is clear that esther likes to write, she states it in this quote "...Id be a professor and write books of poems or write books of poems and be an editor of some sort" and yes she repeats "write books of poems." However she is known for thinking she wants something but not being sure from when buddy proposes to her "If neurotic is wanting two mutually exsclusive things at once and the same time, then im neurotic as hell. Ill be fluying back and forth between one mutually exsclusive thing and another for the rest of my days" So these two facts led to the really bringing out the fig metaphor to me, because after she tells the story of the fig tree later she brings ot up again and says "I saw my life branching out before me like green fig tree in the story." as if she couldnt choose which direction she wanted to go to because she had so many choices.

This book can leave you with a lot of thought provoking questions because of the complexity of her thinking process, like why does the story start off in the middle with the execution or why is it backwards with chapter 7 and 8. Is her dad dying effecting her perspective of men or does the thought of being a housewife turn her off because she cant be a writer at the same time? However it is amazing how a simple story of a life can be so much more complex when you get into the brain of a mentally ill emotionally disturbed woman.