The Appeal Of Color In Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, the appeal of color in the story gave the readers some of the track how the characters’ being throughout the novel. The most interesting thing is when the color in the novel appeal the abnormality of the personality and emotions of each character. Esther Greenwood, the main character in The Bell Jar has a very significant mental development since the beginning of the story. Her mental breakdown is affected by the other characters and the environment. In this story, the color appeal in some of the characters and the environment is not suit for what they are. Psychologically, the white or dull color represent purity and the bright color means energetic; but in the study of The Bell Jar, the colors are not truly

Sometimes, she can’t even control her thought from being an overthinking lady and disturb her mind. One of the first illustration in the novel is when she read the book from the Ladies’ Day about the love story of the nun and the Jewish man. Thorough the forbidden love story of the nun and the Jewish man, Esther thought that “was a lovely story, especially the part about the fig tree in winter under the snow and then the fig tree in spring with all the green fruit (Plath, pg 55).” This shows that Esther is thinking about the fig tree in two seasons, in the winter and spring. Basically, during winter we will experience snowy days and snow is white and spring is the seasons where the nature is starts to get colorful again. As for Esther, she imaged both white and green as the phase of the

Red negatively support the darkness of Esther’s behavior. As we look over the reaction after Esther sleeps with Irwin, her academic instructor and she is bleeding, “I wondered how much I would bleed, and lay down, nursing the towel.” She narrates more, “I couldn’t possibly be a virgin any more. I smiled into the dark. I felt part of a great tradition (pg 229).” She kind off explains her happy feeling in losing her virginity when she looks at the blood. She didn’t tell in her script but the readers could notice what she felt. Same situation occurs when she is violently smashed Marco’s nose, and it’s bleeding. She describes, “I got up and retrieved my stole from the darkness (pg 110).” She kept the darkness of herself when she sees the blood. It’s kind of show something is happening regarding her mental health with the color