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A review by shorshewitch
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
5.0
"To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream. A bad dream. I remembered everything."
-The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath-
My Rating you ask?
No - I don't wish to rate it because rating it will mean discarding the fact that Sylvia Plath wrote this semi-autobiographical novel, right from the bottom of her soul, still unaware of the cracks and crevices inside it that remained cavernous, and parted away from us along with whatever was left of her artistry, to a distant place in the hope of solace. Some might argue that all writers write from the bottom of their hearts and souls so what is so special? I would say I agree, but it isn't the same when your mind threatens to throw you in a bottom-less pit without telling you why really. At such times a person talks and writes not just through the soul but through many other things that a normal person may not be able to devise.
Sylvia Plath, through her ONLY published novel, has given the readers a glimpse in the world of a disturbed person.
Esther Greenwood is a brilliant student and has been asked to intern with a famous American magazine which gives her an opportunity to explore the glitz and glamor of New York. Esther's background and upbringing has always been modest and this moment seized by her, promises her a new world full of success. But reality has other things in mind. As the colors start unfolding from the shining lights of the big city, Esther finds herself pulling away from everything about it. She finds herself in a state of horrific despondency and doesn't quite understand why has she been feeling so low about everything. Why is everything making her suddenly cry?
"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. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
Plath has played with words and used metaphors to elucidate the exact symptom of an overwhelmed brain. The prose makes your head dizzy because getting into the mind of a depressed person makes you dizzy and the pain points are hit perfectly with the right intensity.
"Then he would lean back in his chair and match the tips of his fingers together in a little steeple and tell me why I couldn’t sleep and why I couldn’t read and why I couldn’t eat and why everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end."
When people talk about depression as if it is something to do with a person's will power, I have always wanted to get up and scream at them and say, "Noooo. It has got nothing to do with will power. A depressed person sees no point in having any will at all. Because all he sees is the overall hopelessness of the world around him and the existential crisis puts off the thought of having a normal life altogether. There is so much more to depression than mere will power." Plath spoke about this enormity in a single statement.
The entire book is a journey of a perfectly beautiful girl, who was never really devoid of attention, who worked her way up the ladder and would have done so had the entire fruitlessness would not have deferred her vision - a picture of a seemingly happy person undergoing a major neurotic trouble beneath that mask of happiness and humor.
"I knew I should be grateful to Mrs. Guinea, only I couldn’t feel a thing. If Mrs. Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn’t have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat--on the deck of a ship or at a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok--I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air."
When the tears dry up, what remains is a numb, hollow, sucked up feeling that is completely devoid of anything, rational or irrational.
I think this is more of my homage to Plath for coming out with such daunting memories and putting them on paper for the world to see (and for the critics to judge), for opening up the doors of perception of clinical depression and for writing it down in such precise words and anecdotes that a perfectly stable mind can comprehend.
"But I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure at all. How did I know that someday--at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere--the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?"
-The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath-
My Rating you ask?
No - I don't wish to rate it because rating it will mean discarding the fact that Sylvia Plath wrote this semi-autobiographical novel, right from the bottom of her soul, still unaware of the cracks and crevices inside it that remained cavernous, and parted away from us along with whatever was left of her artistry, to a distant place in the hope of solace. Some might argue that all writers write from the bottom of their hearts and souls so what is so special? I would say I agree, but it isn't the same when your mind threatens to throw you in a bottom-less pit without telling you why really. At such times a person talks and writes not just through the soul but through many other things that a normal person may not be able to devise.
Sylvia Plath, through her ONLY published novel, has given the readers a glimpse in the world of a disturbed person.
Esther Greenwood is a brilliant student and has been asked to intern with a famous American magazine which gives her an opportunity to explore the glitz and glamor of New York. Esther's background and upbringing has always been modest and this moment seized by her, promises her a new world full of success. But reality has other things in mind. As the colors start unfolding from the shining lights of the big city, Esther finds herself pulling away from everything about it. She finds herself in a state of horrific despondency and doesn't quite understand why has she been feeling so low about everything. Why is everything making her suddenly cry?
"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. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
Plath has played with words and used metaphors to elucidate the exact symptom of an overwhelmed brain. The prose makes your head dizzy because getting into the mind of a depressed person makes you dizzy and the pain points are hit perfectly with the right intensity.
"Then he would lean back in his chair and match the tips of his fingers together in a little steeple and tell me why I couldn’t sleep and why I couldn’t read and why I couldn’t eat and why everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end."
When people talk about depression as if it is something to do with a person's will power, I have always wanted to get up and scream at them and say, "Noooo. It has got nothing to do with will power. A depressed person sees no point in having any will at all. Because all he sees is the overall hopelessness of the world around him and the existential crisis puts off the thought of having a normal life altogether. There is so much more to depression than mere will power." Plath spoke about this enormity in a single statement.
The entire book is a journey of a perfectly beautiful girl, who was never really devoid of attention, who worked her way up the ladder and would have done so had the entire fruitlessness would not have deferred her vision - a picture of a seemingly happy person undergoing a major neurotic trouble beneath that mask of happiness and humor.
"I knew I should be grateful to Mrs. Guinea, only I couldn’t feel a thing. If Mrs. Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn’t have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat--on the deck of a ship or at a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok--I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air."
When the tears dry up, what remains is a numb, hollow, sucked up feeling that is completely devoid of anything, rational or irrational.
I think this is more of my homage to Plath for coming out with such daunting memories and putting them on paper for the world to see (and for the critics to judge), for opening up the doors of perception of clinical depression and for writing it down in such precise words and anecdotes that a perfectly stable mind can comprehend.
"But I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure at all. How did I know that someday--at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere--the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?"