Bell Jar- Book Review

Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath

Genre- Fictional Autobiography, psychological fiction, Roman à clef

Reading about depression, melancholy and desolation over internet is one but unraveling about it in a book takes you on a different journey altogether i.e., We live through the pain of the narrator in every stage of his or her life. Sylvia Plath makes this book so relatable putting forth her experiences with social awkwardness, hopelessness and despondency . Every man jack has a psychological trauma, for it is extreme to his/her own level. Bell jar is about a college student Esther Greenwood who aspires to become a poet. She interns for a famous magazine during the summer in the New York City where she realises her societal inhibitions and distort. The ups and downs in her journey makes our heart leap forward and backward.  Though a controversial subjectwith disputed reviews, this book helps you perceive that the bright sunlight is in wait for you after the utmost darkness. It is just YOU who can change YOU. I, in my own way enjoyed the rollercoaster ride of emotions throughout this book. It was a journey worth remembered.

"I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."

"The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence."

"I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what i should any more. This made me sad and tired."

"The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters."

"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."

"Man's world is different from a woman's World and a man's emotions are different from a woman's emotions and only marriage can bring the two worlds and two different sets of emotions together properly."

"I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn't do at all. That's one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the coloured arrows from a fourth of July rocket.""

"To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream."

"The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air."

"Wherever I sat- on the deck of a ship or at a Street cafe in Paris or bangkok- I would be sitting under glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air."

"He needed a divorce- my father said to her, 'Whew, that's a relief, now we can stop pretending and be ourselves'?"

"I knew inspite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs.Willard's kitchen mat."