Personal Review

Personal Review

            I actually enjoyed reading The Bell Jar, which surprised me because most people who had already read it only complained of its depressing story. It is true that the majority of the book is not happy, but being depressed is not a very happy topic. I thought that Sylvia Plath was extremely realistic in her description, and I found that she captured the depressed, uncaring tone perfectly, sometimes even creating that very mood for the reader. I really liked her artful writing with the variety of paradoxes and similes; it made the reader really think about the subject because she would contrast positive and negative things in all her comparisons. Also, I liked how she would foreshadow a lot of things to keep the reader interested and guessing. I am not sure if I liked how she would be telling a specific story and then interrupt it with an anecdote and then return to the story because it made following the timing and each line of the story difficult. This way of writing did keep me more involved with the book then if it was just a continuous flow of the story. Also, by telling the story that way, it mirrors the number of jumps that occur throughout everyone’s brain and made the reader connect to Esther that much more. Also, I am glad that Plath told the reader at the very beginning of the book that she made it out all right in the end. This allowed me to keep hope throughout the book even when it got astonishingly sad that eventually she would return to normalcy and have a better life after. I am also glad that even though Plath specifies that Esther is better, she does not tell about Esther’s life, merely hints that she has a baby, and allows the readers to imagine her in a good, happy. Despite the unhappy topic, I actually enjoyed reading this novel.

Text Connection

Text Connection

            In the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, the main character, Esther Greenwood, is suffering from depression and losing her sanity. Today in our society, there several options for “crazy” people which hopefully allow them to continue their lives in the best way possible or create a safe environment for them to live in. However, in those times mental illness was not understood and there were only a few extreme treatments for mentally unstable patients. Some of these referenced by Plath were shock treatments or lobotomies. Shock treatments often left the patients so fried that they were no longer dangerous or even able to do anything, instead sitting there like a vegetables. These shock treatments were often dangerous and could often end in the patient dying. Because of the controversy of testing on humans as well as society’s tendency already to hide away the mentally sick, these shock treatment experiments were conducted in secret. Today, many movies have been based on insane asylums and often include shock treatments as a kind of torture. However, the doctors really did believe that shock treatments might actually be able to help the mentally sick.

Syntax

Syntax

·        “I was supposed to be having the time of my life.

 I was supposed to be the envy of thousands of other college girls like me all over America who wanted nothing more than to be tripping about in those same size-seven patent leather shoes I’d bought in Bloomingdale’s one lunch hour with a black patent leather belt and black patent leather pocketbook to match. And when my picture came out in the magazine the twelve of us were working on-drinking martinis in a skimpy, imitation silver-lame bodice stuck on to a big, fat cloud of white tulle, on some Starlight Roof, in the company of several anonymous young men with all-American bone structures hired or loaned for the occasion-everybody would think I must be having a real whirl” (2).

This is an example of one of the many voltas that Plath uses throughout the book. The short declaratory sentence at the beginning has a depressing tone. The following sentences are longer and much more in detail. Although the content of these sentences would normally be in a happier, more positive connotation because it is discussing light hearted subjects such as fashion, the tone is turned negative by saying that she should enjoy these things and she is not. 

Plath normally has shorter, more concise sentences; these sentences are often just declarations of how Esther feels, and are most often containing a depressing tone. She often uses longer sentences when she talks about the things that do not really interest Esther, such as make up and the magazine, and includes a more detached tone for these kinds of sentences.

Diction

Diction

            Sylvia Plath creates a variety of unique tones through changes in diction. At the very beginning of the book, she foreshadows Esther’s eventual problem by saying things like “when I was all right again” (3) and “I knew something was wrong with me” (2). This diction was declaratory rather than immense in feeling which demonstrates an unfeeling tone. After the first introduction, Sylvia Plath imitates a young teenage girl’s careless persona in order to show Esther’s normal happier state, using general vocabulary and educated but not very high diction. When Plath creates quotes for the other girls and when Esther verbally speaks in the book, she uses colloquialism and such terms as would be expected from young women in that time period such as “’Isn’t he a card?”(15) and “What are you sweating over that for?” (5). She achieves a lighter tone in the beginning by using this innocent vocabulary based mostly on girls’ accessories like make up and handbags. As the book progresses, Plath gradually changes the connotation of her words making them more negative and therefore causing the tone to also become more depressing. She also uses the word “safe” a lot, talking about how when she is in a room with no windows or using a fake name she feels safer. The obsession with safety creates an anxious tone, in an attempt to create how Esther probably would feel in the situation of fearing for her sanity. This anxiety contrasts with the normally uncaring or depressed tone that the speaker normally has, but continues the pattern of negativity that Esther follows. Near the end of the book, Esther’s word choice becomes more mature and more positive. Her similes are with happier subjects and lead to a more hopeful tone to the end of the book.

Rhetorical Strategies

Rhetorical Strategies

• Repetition: “…they seemed bored as hell. I talked with one of them and she was bored with yachts and bored with flying around in airplanes and bored with skiing in Switzerland at Christmas and bored with the men in Brazil” (4). The repetition of bored in this paragraph is used to display the speaker’s monotonous tone, as well as the exasperation of the “bored” girls. Also, the repetition of such a negative word as bored and the list of normally interesting activities contrast to display the irony of the situation.
• Simile: “Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones” (7) Plath uses a variety of similes to add imagery and tone throughout the novel. Most of her similes are either grotesque or bland which impart a contradictory tone of despair and carelessness at the same time. Occasionally she uses similes to describe how people look, and these are often either declaratory or admiring which lightens the mood slightly.

• Paradox: “At first I wondered why the room felt so safe. Then I realized it was because there were no windows” (127) This is paradoxical because normally when there are no windows, most people feel caged in and scared, where as with Esther it makes her feel safer. Plath uses multiple paradoxes to demonstrate Esther’s unusual way of thinking and to show her thoughtful, dissecting tone.
• Plath uses a variety of other rhetorical strategies to display her tone such as onomatopoeia, metaphors, and imagery. These strategies create a duller tone by being negative connotations which displays Esther’s unhappiness.