bell jar Essays (705 words) - Julius And Ethel Rosenberg

The Bell Jar: A Coming of Age Story Every adolescent experiences the coming-of-age period differently. Some sail through this period with nothing more than a few bumps on the road where as others find it tremendously stressful and painful. The coming-of-age for Esther Greenwood in Sylvia Plath?s The Bell Jar is extremely challenging and at times, life-threatening. In her struggle, Esther contemplates suicide and makes several attempts to end her life. Even though The Bell Jar takes place in the 1950s does not mean that this book is outdated. What it has to say about adolescence, gender roles, identity, society, sex, and pressures to succeed remain particularly relevant today as much as they were back then. The journey through adolescence was as rocky in the 1950s as they are now. While not every adolescent is suffering from extreme depression and has suicidal thoughts, young girls and women can relate to Esther and her struggles with herself and how she fits into the world around her. Every teenage girl has that one thing about herself that she doesn?t like or had that one friend who was better than them is some aspect or other. In the beginning of the book, Esther tells the reader about her beautiful and witty friend Doreen. Doreen is beautiful in a way that Esther isn?t and therefore Doreen seems to get the men?s attention. ?Doreen looked terrific. She was wearing a strapless white lace dress zipped up over a snug corset affair that curved her in the middle and bulged her out again spectacularly above and below? In comparison to Doreen, Esther said that she herself looked like a boy and was ?barely rippled.? Girls can easily relate to the feeling of inferiority. Girls can also relate to the scene where Esther was a third-wheel. ?There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the extra person in the room.? Identity is something all people will struggle with at least one point in their lives. The 1950s was an era of restrictions on women and social confusion of gender roles. In The Bell Jar, Esther faces many choices and decisions that deal with her future, and consequently, the rest of her life. Her lack of identity and her indecision causes her mental breakdown. Esther?s growing disconnection and uncertainty in life is portrayed when she says ?I felt like a race horse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like a date on a tombstone.? Identity, pressures to succeed, and gender roles are still a huge source of frustration for adolescents. Many of us understand what it is like to not know what you want to do with your life. Women today still sometimes have to choose between a family and a career. Numerous college students do not know what career or major to choose. Countless people feel the overwhelming pressure to succeed and choose a path for themselves. These frustrations are shared with Esther. An example of this would be her metaphor of the fig tree. ?I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked?.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.? Another example is when she tells Buddy ?If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another f or the rest of my days.?