Silvia Plath: The Bell Jar

1341 Words6 Pages
Characters: In the book The Bell Jar, many of the characters playing a role have influenced the protagonist, Esther Greenwood, immensely. These characters include: Buddy Willard, her mother, Joan, and her very own self. Buddy Willard is Esther’s boyfriend to a certain point. Buddy is intelligent, good looking, and has graduated from Yale, but does not understand Esther’s love for poetry and has a hazy idea of women’s roles in society. Esther’s mother fails to understand Esther and has led a difficult life. She has had to raise two children all alone and struggled to support them when they were mere children. Joan was Esther’s companion when she was in the mental hospital, whom she did not like very much, but connected to her greatly. Esther grew up with her brother and her mother, and has graduated from her junior year in college. Esther struggles with herself between uncertainty and unreality with all that is going around her. Esther’s struggle is revealed in the following statement: “I felt very still and very empty, the way the... dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullaballoo.” Esther feels as if she has been separated from everything going on in New York City. Her sense of emptiness has caused her to lose her sense of who she is. In reality, Esther Greenwood is really Sylvia Plath, whom this book is autobiographical to, on which the events are very similar to Sylvia’s life. This same event has occurred in Sylvia’s life, in the exact same order. When Sylvia went to New York City after winning a contest for her short story “Sunday at the Mintons”, she too felt separated from the rest of society and empty inside of her. This experience has caused Sylvia to write like this because this same event has occurred in her lifetime, which gave this element a lonely and scared tone. All of the characters from The Bell Jar are described the way they are because

More about Silvia Plath: The Bell Jar

Open Document