Adventures in Reading: "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath

I wish books didn't make me feel so woozy.

This book was not always easy to get through. The writing is engaging and honest. The content is heavy. And toward the end there's a lot of blood, which caused some serious flashbacks and unwanted fainty feelings. Ugh.

However, I think the thing that I enjoy most about the book is its truth. Not only is the story itself fairly autobiographical, but the sense of suffocating in the open air, the internal disconnect, the fear of not being able to trust your own mind...these are things that real people struggle with every day. There were times when I was frustrated during this book, when I felt the hopelessness of Esther Greenwood and, like her, just wanted it to end. Whether this effect was intended by the author or not, I can't say. But looking back, I would say that the tension created by this feeling makes the novel even more believable and worthwhile in the end.

Despite her gradual breakdown, I love that Esther never sounds insane. As a narrator, she is trustworthy, and this is what allows the novel to function. I understand why this book is essentially a classic. It speaks to the place in all of us that is broken and unsure and searching.

And now, I'll leave you with my favorite passage:

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and other fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, staring to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinke and go black, and one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

Oh and also this part:

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart.

I am. I am. I am."