How Does Plath Characterize In The Bell Jar

As a writer, Esther Greenwood must understand the importance of repeated symbols and rich imagery, using them to create meaning in her work and tell a vivid and evocative story. As a woman suffering from debilitating depression, her talent for writing affects her perception of events and allows her to characterize them in stark, hauntingly real terms. In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath uses the symbol of, naturally, a bell jar, conveying the sensation of being trapped and suffocated by mental illness. The first use of the bell jar occurs in the beginning of Chapter Fifteen, when Esther is waiting for her sponsor, Mrs. Guinea, to decide if she will pay for Esther to be treated at a private institution. Plath describes the bell jar as forcing Esther to breathe the same air until she suffocates. The air inside the bell jar seems to be polluted and rank, by Esther’s description. After an electroshock treatment, Esther feels as though the bell jar has been lifted, allowing her to breathe freely again. Plath is characterizing the bell jar as Esther’s depression, slowly surrounding her with hot, used-up, and stifling air until she can’t take it any longer and commits suicide.

The bell jar also represents the greatest fear of the depressed; the feeling of being trapped in mental illness, unable to escape of experience life fully again. Esther notes that the world is a bad dream to a person in the bell jar, and says that she fears the day that the jar may once again descend on her, following her through life and refusing to yield. Esther, and Plath by extension, knows that depression cannot be eliminated by running from it; before being treated, Esther feels that no matter where in the world she might travel, the bell jar will still sit around her, warping the world and her