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Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

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Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar
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Sylvia Plath writes her autobiography The Bell Jar utilizing a smart protagonist, whose life is driven into depression by the deterioration of today’s society to familiarize her readers with suicide. Esther lives a perfect life, according to anyone looking at her on the surface. Esther continues to live her life in a fully coordinated “patent-leather” outfit from “Bloomingdale’s” while she sips “martinis” surrounded by “anonymous young men with all-American bone structures”, yet she never has a good time (2). She suppresses her emotions throughout her time in New York and never learns how to use her emotions for her writing. Esther set up goals throughout her life based on her success in writing and academics. With her writing …show more content…
Examining Plath’s use of papillary imagery, the reader sees a relationship with taste and opulence. Esther details the Ladies Day Banquet, particularly its feast of “crabmeat and mayonnaise”, “rare roast beef”, and a “[heaping bowl] of caviar”, comparing it’s flavor to an “overstewed […] bitter” cup of coffee (24). These details make the reader’s mouth water. These scrumptious foods sound even more appealing in the context of bitter black coffee. The juxtaposition of these tastes conveys the value Esther is placing in this banquet feast. Plath continues to use visual imagery to express the darkness of her mind. Esther’s relationship with her father embodies the only existence of happiness in her life, yet when she goes to visit his grave, all she sees is darkness. Esther “[grows] very depressed” in the presence of a “fine drizzle” from the “gray sky” filled with “low, shaggy clouds” sending a “clammy dampness” through her body (166). Plath draws a very monochrome and dark picture to state Esther is stubbornly depressed. Esther seems to be at a point of no return, because the thought of her father, the beacon of happiness in her life, does not spark any joy in her. She can only dwell on his death, more proof of her boundless pessimism. Plath continues her fervent use of imagery in the form of olfactory imagery to appeal to her reader’s smell. Esther is reflecting on New York and its “fusty, peanut-smelling […] subway” stations (1). Relating subways to peanuts degrades subways to something trivial. This comparison accentuates New York’s filth, which Esther lists as a con of the cursed city. Esther is telling her reader New York makes her uncomfortable in her own skin, this olfactory imagery aids Plath in foreshadowing Esther’s great discomfort in New York. Continuing on, Plath enlists auditory imagery into her beautiful abundance of metaphors to specify the darkness
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