BOOK REVIEW : THE BELL JAR

Author- Sylvia Plath
Genre- Autobiographical fiction.
                          
                         

  

                        “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; 
                              I lift my eyes and all is born again.” 

This book is brilliantly written. You don't realise what you have got yourself into even after the novel ends. It's when you analyse it, that's when the little things, like foreshadowing, symbols, etc start making sense.             Since the book is narrated by a person who is depressed the reader is able to know the story from a point of view of such a person. While reading I thought that everything is perfectly all right until it was pointed out by the author herself that the main character is depressed. What the author is trying to point out is, that a person suffering from depression doesn't even know that they are depressed because for them what they see and think is the real world.              It just amazes me that such a novel was written in the 1950s, ofcourse today some of the things the protagonist,Esther Greenwood talked about was something I thought of as nothing new but if you think about doing those things in the 1950s you realise it was something new and bold for that time.              Sylvia Plath, did write about her own life in this novel but she changed some details. It is believed what Sylvia wrote about the protagonist and her falling into depression is what she actually went through.                                          There are so many quotes which resonated with me, made me fall in love with this book as well. “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”  “The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”  “If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”  "How did I know that someday—at college, in Europe, somewhere,       anywhere—the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?" "She wants, to be everything.” “To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.”  “I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.”              The feminism portrayed is something which I know will speak to every one in today's time. This one specific thing which is mentioned about marriage is what exactly I think and to see it printed somewhere made my stand on it more firm, “That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.”               I would totally recommend this book to everyone but just a small piece of advice- Read it and then analyse it or read it's analysis online, and your reading experience will be we very good. I know this is a book I am going to be reading over and over again. My Verdict- 4/5 Follow us on Instagram- booknbhook