What does it mean to feel alone? Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar
In this class, students explored the intersection of gender, mental illnes and loneliness. We read and discussed Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar.
The Bell Jar chronicles the breakdown of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as a probable and accessible experience to the reader. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.- Goodreads
Student Discussion Questions
Premise students come to class with questions for discussions. Here’s a sampling of the student-generated discussion questions.
How does one's default or innate view of the world influence the sense of aloneness? What are ways to ascertain whether one's sense of aloneness is accurate, i.e. whether one is in fact, alone, i.e. not connected to others in meaningful ways?
If one's innate view of the world is that it is a bad place, one in which it is not worth living, is it ever possible to not feel alone?
Can the sense of non-aloneness remedy a mental illness?
Do mental illnesses that affect identity create an intractable type of aloneness? In such cases, one cannot connect even to one's self (Esther repeatedly doesn't recognize herself in the mirror, she feels detached from her physical body, plus her physiology is betraying her. Ch3 refers to the mirror as a "silver hole," i.e., one in which one can lose one's self.
Is the narrator's loneliness or sense of being alone the cause of her mental illness or the outcome of it?
I wasn’t struck by the isolation of Esther in the usual sense, nothing out of the ordinary there. But there is this isolation of different perceptions of reality and mental illness.
What does Esther mean when she tells herself I am, I am, I am (pgs 243 & 158).
How much can you relate to Esther, and what specifically do you find resonates most with the character?
How does illness separate us from one another?
How much of Esther's loneliness is influenced by society's expectations of women, and how much of it is the result of her own choices?
“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.” What does this quote mean?
Wondering if only children and those with siblings see being alone differently…
Esther tries to commit suicide but ultimately fails. On the other hand, Joan's attempt is successful. What purpose does this serve in the novel? What message was Sylvia Plath trying to share with the reader?
does Esther “hear voices” or is she disassociative or both? does madness for Esther exist in the third time that is neither day nor night? can anyone clearly lay out a linear timeline of events?
I kept thinking that this is Depression with a capital D. The loneliness that comes from depression is all-encompassing. The feeling alone is because you believe no one can help. I also wonder if Imposter Syndrome was the catalyst or was it the death of her father that was the catalyst?
I noticed roses came up twice in the book..once when Esther has to take a pic of herself and is asked what she wants to be and is given a paper rose...and then is also given roses for her bday from her mom. I feel like Plath meant something there.
What are we to make of the fact Esther's obvious intelligence and self-awareness (to say nothing of her verbal precocity) can't save her?
