Issac Olson
Mrs. Prokott
Hour 5
14, December, 2016
Submitting To Depression.
As knowledge makes its way through history, the perception between right and wrong alters in the looming shadow of it. Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar features a character named Esther who suffered from a mental illness. Esther’s world is completely different to how someone in her position would be treated today. It is imperative to see that Esther’s depression is a part of the setting, due to the immoralities we can see using a 21st-century lense. So, how would Esther's live be different is she was in 2016, and would she suffer as much?
All things considered, between the nurses, her mother, and Joan, Esther hates electroshock treatment (EST) the most. Ester began EST
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at the state mental hospital; given the time frame, we can assume that this was common practice in America at the time. There are many times within the book that Esther shows dread and fear in the EST. When in the state mental hospital, Esther, shows a great deal of displeasure when she has to undergo EST; a prime example of this is when Esther had her first experience with EST, she described the pain as, “...with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and sap fly out of me like a split plant.” (Plath 143) . When Esther's sponsor moved her to a private mental hospital, Dr. Noland saw that emotion and stopped telling her that she had them the next day so she would sleep through the night and not worry, Esther knew she had the next morning when the nurse told her, “‘Greenwood, no breakfast today’.”(210). Esther’s depression doesn't get better, nor worse in these chapters, so it is evident that the EST is not performing for its intended purpose; hence the brutality in the situation. This is evident, that this private institution is much better, because the doctors get to know their patient. Esther even sights this when she was talking about her first experience with Doctor Gordon, she, “...could see right away he was conceded” (129); or otherwise saying that he is narcissistic and really doesn't care about the patient, more so the money acquitted with his position. In any case of illness or injury, mental or physical, the patient should never be threatened by the caretakers in the situation. This is common sense to us; however, after her hospitalized suicide attempt, that is exactly how she felt. Regardless if Esther was being uncooperative, she should not have felt like the nurses were acting, “As if I wasn’t even there.” (175). This is just evidence that the doctors and nurses were over crowded beasts that could not handle their patient load. Today, Mental Illness is still a taboo, but this level of ignorance and neglect of the patient we like to think is rare.
Looking at what Esther had to go through at the state mental hospital vs. the private one is an interesting cross-examination. At the state, they had a lot of patients to consider when doing anything, now that Esther is at the private institution, her help is very individualized and more vigorous; for better or …show more content…
worse. In essence, Esther’s depression is a part of the setting because it deludes the way she thinks, acts, and her motivation to do things.
When Esther went to go talk to a physiatrist for the first time, she tells him a variety of issues she is having, like, “...I told Doctor Gordon about not sleeping and not eating and not reading. I didn’t tell him about the handwriting, which bothered me most of all.” (130). These are things we saw Esther doing in the first chapters of the book that we lose after the Marco incident. Esther’s depression also changes the setting of the book by itself, through the actions it puts Esther through, like the suicide attempts.
All and all, Esther’s depression is arguably the main character in the story but is dependent on Esther to perform actions. Esther is completely bound to her depression, and that creates Ether’s movement to different places. This edits the Setting in such a way, that the only thing Esther can do is be uncooperative as we see in the book. Esther’s depression is not only a part of the setting, but it is a character that is affecting Esther’s train of
thought.
The listing plath uses builds detail but also creates a long rambling effect, the repetition of the connective “and” emphasises the endless opportunities that are available to Esther. While many women would dive at the opportunities that are available, esther’s response to the dilemma of choosing is negative. She feels burdened with the dilemma and feels “dreadfully inadequate” therefore due to esther’s negative perception of self makes esther belief that she is unqualified to make a decision. But why does esther feel this way? What is the cause of the hesitation? - is it because of her mental illness?
Sylvia Plath wrote the semi autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, in which the main character, Esther, struggles with depression as she attempts to make herself known as a writer in the 1950’s. She is getting the opportunity to apprentice under a well-known fashion magazine editor, but still cannot find true happiness. She crumbles under her depression due to feeling that she doesn’t fit in, and eventually ends up being put into a mental hospital undergoing electroshock therapy. Still, she describes the depth of her depression as “Wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street a cafe in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air” (Plath 178). The pressure to assimilate to society’s standards from her mother, friends, and romantic interests, almost pushes her over the edge and causes her to attempt suicide multiple times throughout her life. Buddy Willard, Esther’s boyfriend at a time, asks her to marry him repeatedly in which she declines. Her mother tries to get her to marry and makes her go to therapy eventually, which leads to the mental hospital. Esther resents the way of settling down and making a family, as well as going out and partying all night. She just wants to work to become a journalist or publisher. Though, part of her longs for these other lives that she imagines livings, if she were a different person or if different things happened in her life. That’s how Elly Higgenbottom came about. Elly is Esther when Esther doesn’t want to be herself to new people. Esther’s story portrays the role of women in society in the 1950’s through Esther’s family and friends pushing her to conform to the gender roles of the time.
In the novel, Esther Greenwood, the main character, is a young woman, from a small town, who wins a writing competition, and is sent to New York for a month to work for a magazine. Esther struggles throughout the story to discover who she truly is. She is very pessimistic about life and has many insecurities about how people perceive her. Esther is never genuinely happy about anything that goes on through the course of the novel. When she first arrives at her hotel in New York, the first thing she thinks people will assume about her is, “Look what can happen in this country, they’d say. A girl lives in some out-of-the-way town for nineteen years, so poor she can’t afford a
Sylvia Plath’s novel, “The Bell Jar”, tells a story of a young woman’s descent into mental illness. Esther Greenwood, a 19 year old girl, struggles to find meaning within her life as she sees a distorted version of the world. In Plath’s novel, different elements and themes of symbolism are used to explain the mental downfall of the book’s main character and narrator such as cutting her off from others, forcing her to delve further into her own mind, and casting an air of negativity around her. Plath uses images of rotting fig trees and veils of mist to convey the desperation she feels when confronted with issues of her future. Esther Greenwood feels that she is trapped under a bell jar, which distorts her view of the world around her.
At the end of the novel, Esther finally see’s a light at the end of the tunnel. She finally realizes that there is hope for her to become healthy again. Once Esther realizes that she will not always feel as bad as she does, she also comes to the conclusion that all the negativity and questioning in her life have made her into the person she has become. Esther finally realizes what her true identity is and she is okay with who she has become.
...he must learn to love and trust others. Dr. Nolan assures Esther that the shock treatments she will give her will be safe and admistered properly. Esther ends things with Buddy and becomes his friend. She even loses her virginity to a man she hardly knows. Esther has thrown away all her cares and does not do what she is expected to do by society but instead does what she is comfortable with. Sadly, Esther’s hospital friend, Joan, commits suicide and leaves Esther shattered and scarred. However, Esther continues to get better when she learns to start trusting Dr. Nolan and Buddy. She ultimately begins to trust her self as well. After learning to disregard the expectation of everyone else and to set her own goals, Esther heals exponentially. In the end, Esther enters a conference room where she will be told if she may return home now that she has come of her bell jar.
...be a death-obsessed poet, and usually all of her pieces were dark and negative. “Although the seemingly inevitable suicide of Sylvia Plath would invoke a weak image of her, as does the main character of her novel’s own suicide attempt, it is in her work where we see her emotional triumphs as well as her emotional setbacks,” (Sylvia). Esther is as weak as Plath, she is negative, and does not have any motivation to complete anything.
Life is full of endless amounts of beautiful encounters for every character in the novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, except for Esther. She suffers from a severe and complex mental illness that impacts her life greatly. Although it is clear that Esther suffers strongly from depression in the novel, Sylvia Plath chooses to tell her life abstractly through countless symbols and ironies to prove that Esther depression completely consumes her. Everything that Esther sees is through a lens of depression, which scews her outlook on life.
... scolded me, but kept begging me, with a sorrowful face to tell her what she had done was wrong” (226).The reason Esther is in this situation is because of her mom. Esther depression has reached its climax. The result of an unhappy relationship according to Freud has impacted Esther.
Obviously, Esther has both physical and mental issues as she cannot do most of the essential things people do in their daily life, like most importantly: eating and sleeping. Esther’s mental ailments include her disillusionment that actions have no purpose or meaning as everyone only ends up the same way in the end: dead. Her depressive thoughts eat at her until a level of madness is reached. All of her problems quoted are an effect of the climax when she is denied access into a writing class. When Esther’s condition worsened, she attempts to kill herself several times, once on a beach date with her friends. During this trip Esther swims out as far as she could and decides to force herself to drown, but fails. Plath uses defeated diction with several words like “panting”, “strenuous exertion”, “I dived and dived again”, “popped”, “mocked me”, “beaten”, and “turned back” (Plath 161) establish her failure in killing herself. In this case the defeated diction turns out in a positive outcome because Esther’s body will not physically kill itself. In contrast, Esther attempting to kill herself in this way shows that
One of the main reasons why Esther tried to commit suicide was the way she perceived her mother's actions, and the fact that she hates her mother:
The beginning of the novel introduces the reader to Esther O'Malley Robertson as the last of a family of extreme women. She is sitting in her home, remembering a story that her grandmother told her a long time ago. Esther is the first character that the reader is introduced to, but we do not really understand who she is until the end of the story. Esther's main struggle is dealing with her home on Loughbreeze Beach being torn down, and trying to figure out the mysteries of her family's past.
...es these primitive standards, she becomes melancholy because she does not attune into the gender roles of women, which particularly focus on marriage, maternity, and domesticity. Like other nineteen year old women, Esther has many goals and ambitions in her life. Nevertheless, Esther is disparaged by society’s blunt roles created for women. Although she experiences a tremendous psychological journey, she is able to liberate herself from society’s suffocating constraints. Esther is an excellent inspiration for women who are also currently battling with society’s degrading stereotypes. She is a persistent woman who perseveres to accomplish more than being a stay at home mother. Thus, Esther is a voice for women who are trying to abolish the airless conformism that is prevalent in 1950’s society.
On the eve of her freedom from the asylum, Esther laments, “I had hoped, at my departure, I would feel sure and knowledgeable about everything that lay ahead- after all, I had been ‘analyzed.’ Instead, all I could see were question marks” (243). The novel is left open-ended, with a slightly optimistic tone but no details to help the reader fully understand the final step of her healing process. Esther desired to be free of social conventions and double standards, but consistently imposed them upon herself and on the people around her. Her evolution in understanding never reaches a satisfying conclusion, and the reader is also left with nothing but question marks.
He is conceited and artificial. When he asks what Ester thinks is wrong, she recognizes that he considers the root of her mental instability to be superficial: “That made it sound as if nothing was really wrong, I only thought it was wrong.” (130) To contrast, Dr. Nolan is a friend to Ester and connects to her on a deeply emotional level during her recovery. She understands Ester’s desire to not have visitors and, in the interest of her patient’s health, ensures that she has no more. She sympathizes with Ester’s fear of electroshock therapy and reassures her that when she enters treatment again, it will make her feel better – much unlike the fiasco of Ester’s shock therapy under Dr. Gordon.