Adolescence in the Bell Jar and Catcher in the Rye

Adolescence in the Bell Jar and Catcher in the Rye

Adolescence is the period between puberty and adulthood. Every

teenager experience this moment in life differently some sail through

happily to carry on with a peaceful life where as others are less

fortunate and find that this moment is much more harder and stressful

then they thought. Esther Greenwood and Holden Caulfield are one of

the less fortunate and have bad experiences through their adolescent.

Salinger and Plath present this in their novels Catcher in the Rye and

The Bell Jar. Both novelists use first person narrative giving us as

readers a more personal description about their story, involving us

more into their lives and letting us travel with them on their pathway

through adolescent. The tone, dictation and the use of grammar are

consistently those of an adolescent person and express distinctive

commentary on how they feel and what they observe everyday.

Salinger and Plath present the different elements of adolescence that

teenagers experience such as depression, grief, pressure, sexuality

etc through their characters Holden and Esther.

Throughout adolescence teenagers experience a variety of pressures

from their family, friends and even the society. Holden and Esther

both come from adequate families who brought them up well although

this can also mean living up to their expectations. Esther lives up to

different expectations than Holden. Esther’s background was less

promising than others, her mother could not provide her with a good

education it was down the Esther to work really hard at studying to

gain scholarships she places huge pressure on herself to achieve these

goals that she doesn’t know anything else “ I had been inadequate a...

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...and doesn’t bother to

help him. This mirrors with Esther’s feeling, that people are not

responding to her properly even her own mother who doesn’t believe

that the depression is a true illness but just a passing perversity or

rebellion. Even her own Doctor fails to help her by showing that he

wasn’t really listening to what Esther had to say about her illness by

repeating a question to Esther. Throughout the novel Esther is very

direct about her depression “I haven’t slept for 14 days” yet no one

chooses to listen to hear but when she tells them “ I feel better, I

don’t want to go to the doctors” her mum suddenly listens replying “ I

knew my baby wasn’t like that” Plath shows that people don’t want to

hear anything depressing or morbid unless it directly involves them

but if it doesn’t they don’t want to know they only listen to what

they want to hear.