The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

I knew a little about Plath's life before I started reading this, but didn't realize "The Bell Jar" was autobiographical. I honestly don't know if knowing that beforehand would have changed my feelings about it.   I understood and identified with her main character so well that I've begun to question my own sanity.


The story is simple, but written in a way that had me comparing her characters to people I know in my life.  But can a person truly know another?  Even close friends and family may be hiding stress, guilt and depression behind contented masks.  You hear of perfectly "normal" people committing suicide and family and friends closest to them not realizing anything was wrong.

You can tell from her writing that Sylvia Plath was also a poet. The way she describes  the people, settings and actions taken are all charged with meaning.  From a jazz club in New York City to the Boston Common and on to the asylum she was committed to.  Each becomes vivid in your mind.


"I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade.  Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next day had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue."

~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar