Analysis Of Sylvia Plaths The Bell Jar - 1593 Words

Throughout a persons life, they find themselves at a crossroads at many different points, from deciding a career to picking a partner. As youth exit their teen years, they are faced with difficult decisions concerning the trajectory of their life past high school, but the endless possibilities that are now available to these young adults undermine their ability to make a unbiased, unstressed decision. With an emphasis on being able to do it all, they are left unable to choose due to fear of abandoning the other options. This cultimating stress leads to certain youths blindly following paths that are praised by those around them, rather than addressing their own goals and wants, and making an informed decision. In Sylvia Plaths coming of†¦show more content†¦Before entering the program, she had a clear idea of what she wanted after college, stating that â€Å"I always thought I had in mind was getting some big scholarship to graduate school or a grant to study all over Europ e, and then I thought I’d be a professor and write books of poems or writes books of poems and be an editor of some sort†. Yet as her final year of college approaches, Esther admits to her boss that â€Å"[she] doesn’t really know†. The aimlessness of her career leads her to be chastised by said boss, who implores her to settle on a goal and follow it through. However, Ester continues to be overwhelmed by the various paths she can take, and ends up entertaining all possibilities but eventually abandoning them as well. She spends her summer staying in the suburbs with her mother, attempting to write and losing inspiration as â€Å"plan after plan started leaping through my head, like a family of scatty rabbits†. Esther cannot see anything beyond the influx of potential that her life holds, and this ends up being her undoing. As she remains stagnant in her projectory as peers move onto bigger, brighter things, her mental health deteriorates to the poi nt of her attempting suicide. This need to succeed at every opportunity leads to the failure in all, and Esther is left without a plan for the future or a concrete sense of self. To an extent,Show MoreRelatedAn Analysis Of Sylvia Plaths The Bell Jar1603 Words   |  7 Pagesâ€Å"woman-hater† (106) in New York and her rejection from a selective writing course, which proves her depression is a result of the events that occur in her life, rather than her own brain miswirings. In her article â€Å"We Are All Mad Here: Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar as a Political novel,† Laura De La Parra Fernandez explains: â€Å"the moment her career opportunities dwindle, she starts to feel trapped in a role she does not desire, and that is when she begins to identify herself with the Other counter toRead MoreAnalysis Of Sylvia Plaths The Bell Jar747 Words   |  3 PagesThe Bell Jar, written by Sylvia Plath, is a fictionalized memoir centered around main character, Esther Green wood. Esther is a young woman from Boston who is extremely intelligent and funds her education through several scholarships. As she continuously draws nearer to the end of her education, Esther begins to realize the constraints put on women in the society she was born into. Women of this time were expected to get married and have children while also giving up their aspirations of a careerRead MoreRole of Food in Sylvia Plaths The Bell Jar610 Words   |  3 PagesThe Bell Jar Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is rich with an array of motifs, all which serve to sustain the novel’s primary themes. A motif particularly prevalent within the first half of the novel involves food, specifically Esther Greenwood’s relationship with food. This peculiar relationship corroborates the book’s themes of Esther’s continuous rebirthing rituals, and of her extreme dissatisfaction. The interrelation with food functions in two distinct manners: literally and figuratively. ThisRead MoreBiography of Sylvia Plath1452 Words   |  6 PagesCritical Analysis Sylvia Plath, a great American author, focuses mostly on actual experiences. Plath’s poetry displays feelings and emotions. Plath had the ability to transform everyday happenings into poems or diary entries. Plath had a passion for poetry and her work was valued. She was inspired by novelists and her own skills. Her poetry was also very important to readers and critics. Sylvia Plath’s work shows change throughout her lifetime, relates to feelings and emotions, and focuses on dayRead MoreThe Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath1211 Words   |  5 PagesSylvia Plath Research Paper Title The Bell Jar place[s] [the] turbulent months[of an adolescent’s life] in[to] mature perspective (Hall, 30). In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath uses parallelism, stream of consciousness, the motif of renewal and rebirth, symbolism of the boundary-driven entrapped mentally ill, and auto-biographical details to epitomize the mental downfall of protagonist, Esther Greenwood. Plath also explores the idea of how grave these timeless and poignant issues can affect a fragileRead MoreThe Bell Jar2368 Words   |  10 PagesResearch Paper: The Bell Jar, By: Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is a work of fiction that spans a six month time period in the life of the protagonist and narrator, Esther Greenwood. The novel tells of Esther’s battle against her oppressive surroundings and her ever building madness, this is the central conflict throughout the narrative. After coming home from a month in New York as a guest editor for a magazine, Esther begins to have trouble with everyday activities such as reading,Read More Weaknesses of Esther and Plath Exposed in Sylvia Plaths The Bell Jar1174 Words   |  5 PagesExposed in The Bell Jar   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The glass of which a bell jar is constructed is thick and suffocating, intending to preserve its ornamental contents but instead traps in it stale air.   The thickness of the bell jar glass prevents the prisoner from clearly seeing through distortion.   Sylvia Plath writes with extreme conviction, as The Bell Jar is essentially her autobiography.   The fitting title symbolizes not only her suffocation and mental illness, but also the internal struggle of Plaths alter egoRead MoreThe Characters of Women in The Handmaids Tale and The Bell Jar1504 Words   |  7 Pages Women in The Handmaids Tale and The Bell Jar nbsp; Sylvia Plaths renowned autobiographical legend The Bell Jar and Margaret Atwoods fictional masterpiece The handmaids tale are the two emotional feminist stories, which basically involve the womens struggle. Narrated with a touching tone and filled with an intense feminist voice, both novels explore the conflict of their respective protagonists in a male dominated society. In spite of several extraordinary similarities in termsRead More An Analysis of Sylvia Plaths Poem, Daddy Essay793 Words   |  4 PagesAn Analysis of Sylvia Plaths Poem, Daddy Sylvia Plaths famous poem Daddy seems to refer quite consistently to her deceased father (and obliquely to her then estranged husband Ted Hughes) by use of many references that can clearly be associated with the background of Otto Plath, emphasizing his German heritage. These include the Polish town where Otto was born, the atrocities of the German Nazis in the Second World War (Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen), the Luftwaffe, and even the professorialRead MoreEssay about Sylvia Plath1185 Words   |  5 PagesSylvia Plath This line is from Sylvia Plaths poem Lady Lazarus, one of many that helped make her an icon of modern American poetry. They have an eerie, prophetic quality, seeming to foreshadow the tragic death of this young writer. Understanding Sylvia Plaths words require a closer look at both her life and a few of her works. Though critics have described her writing as governed by negative vitalism, her distinct individuality has made her a conversation piece among those familiar