The Bell Jar By Sylvia Plath
“The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
The Bell Jar is not an easy book. You don’t just curl up in a comfy chair with a nice hot cup of tea and read the whole thing. You couldn’t digest it all at once. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions; tearing your heart to pieces and making you feel every second of it. But you still go on knowing that what will happen next will hurt even more.
In short, it’s a disturbing book.
How can it not? it describes a poor woman’s descent into insanity. Can you imagine the psychological circumstances that can cause someone to literally lose their mind? chilling, no? But I have always loved diving deep into the human mind, it’s fascinating.
I believe that Plath shows off her superior writing skills in this work in several ways. Most important of which is that by the end of the book, you’ll find yourself convinced that losing one’s mind is alright. Which most certainly is not true. Another stroke of brilliance in this work is it’s ability to make you think and think and think about life, your life, until you find yourself still awake at 3 AM with no idea how the time flew away.
More than two years after reading it, the story still echoes inside my mind. I read it in some of the darkest days of my life, a very unwise decision. But it only goes to show that strong character and strong faith will always get you through the toughest hurdles…I am alive, well, sane, strong.
Now that I am no longer ”under the bell jar”, I feel like the book is worth talking about. It isn’t considered an American Classic for no reason; this is a story about human emotions in their rawest form. No sugarcoating. Therefore I think that people who strive to understand the human mind should read it. It won’t explain…but it will help you ask the right questions.
So many quotes touched my heart in this book. But the one above works for me now with one glaring difference: The Bell Jar is gone.
Breathe.
