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Summary: Plath's highly disturbing poetry in novel form.
Review: This book is everything you knew about life but didn't want to believe. The story of a girl who falls from the embraces of sanity into the bell jar where life takes on a completely different view. This book should come handy with a pack of razor blades. I never read a book that has shaped my life as much as this one. Towards the end I stopped feeling symapathy for the character as I felt like I was having a pity party. Plath's writing style reminds me of Salinger possessed by the spirit of Poe. A great book to read just don't stay in house alone after reading it
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Summary: A powerful psychological time bomb
Review: This was simply too powerful a book to describe. I would reccommend anyone who has ever felt themselves overwhelmed, to take this eerie journey with a woman who could not take the pressures life has to offer. But beware, the strength of her prose offers a view, sometimes too close for comfort, of a mind in the ravages of a breakdown.
Rebecca Silverstein
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Summary: THE BELL-JAR , BY SYLVIA PLATH
Review: It is interesting in that it shows that "teenage angst", a term that we often apply to the Generation X-ers of today, has always been prevalent in society. It treats depression and feelings of self-worthlessness as real and tangiable things. Someone who had not experienced these feelings herself would not have been able to write such a believable novel. Kristy Wandl
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Summary: Stunningly poignant.
Review: I don't often cry because of the power of a book.The Bell Jar, however, is no ordinary book. From thebeginning, in her Salinger-esque style, Sylvia Plath traces the tortured downward spiral of her own soul, the story made ever-so-much more effective by the heartwrenching true tale of her own suicide. A wonderful book, suitable for the young, the old, and everywhere in between; NOT, however, for those afraid to reflect on their own depths and faults, and those of society. -Anthony Gabriele
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Summary: Sylvia Plath's perspective was nothing less than genius.
Review: Sylvia Plath's perspective,on something as simple as a glass of water,was nothing less than genius. Along with
the mastermind of her poetry, 'The Bell Jar'-with it's steel
vice of poignace and honesty,can still make this grown
man cry. For the new Doom and Gloom Generation this will
be a must read while listening to your big brothers old
Joy Division and Cure albums. -Craig Hardesty
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Summary: Madness and Brilliance
Review: The Bell Jar is a stark narrative about depression, and the power it has to completely immobilize protagonist Esther Greenwood and throw her into insanity. The Bell Jar's prose is easy to read, and yet Sylvia Plath's writing style is highly sophisticated and exact, which is startling considering the nearness of her own suicide. Esther Greenwood begins an ambitious and talented young writer, working for a beauty magazine in New York, and attending college on a full scholarship. Her sorrow and madness begin to surface, and she soon finds herself trapped in a revolving door of mental asylums. The interesting thing here is way the story is told; unflinchingly and without remorse. I could hear Plath's cold, spare, incisive voice behind that of Miss Greenwood - hurting and ready to die. The Bell Jar can be read as a fierce indictment on depression. It is a brilliant, haunting, frightening work, and it held my interest intensely the whole way through.
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Summary: Looking at what's under glass
Review: Lorna Lindquist
bamalorna@hotmail.comLooking at what's under the glass A review of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar While reading Plath can be muddied by all the "Plath baggage" that history has shown us, I think that coming to and away from this book with an open mind will help the reader enjoy it as much as I did. Plath's untimely end is not a mystery to the current reader, but to expect this book to be depressing insults the message that Plath tries to convey.
The main character, Esther Greenwood, obviously suffers from a chronic depressive disorder. She constantly thinks to herself that she should be happy. She looks objectively at her sadness and explores it as though it is simply a bad habit. Greenwood comments again and again that she knows she should be excited about her fortunes in life.
These fortunes mimic the fortunes that Plath herself enjoyed as a young writer. She was published early and had early success, but still her life felt blank enough for her to stick her head in the oven before she turned 30. I think that in this way, The Bell Jar is a thinly veiled autobiography. I also think that she wrote this in third person not so that her personal life could be kept hidden, but so that the examinations of depression could gain a sort of validity by being removed from the author and her stigma.
One farce of depression that Plath destroys in Greenwood is the cliché that all depressed people simply lay around feeling sorry for themselves all day. In fact, Plath suggests that people who are depressed know that there is a problem with themselves, but lack the ambition to root it and solve it because even life as a whole has lost its luster.
As a work, message removed, Plath's talent as a poet comes shining through. She uses phrases that so accurately describe Greenwood's situation that you feel like you can see her thoughts. She uses childish language that indicates the childish tone Plath thinks that life has to offer. She constantly says that things are "stupid" she is "stupid" others are "stupid."
Overall I think that The Bell Jar offers more to the reader than a simple story to read about what appears to be a "crazy girl," it offers instead excellent insight made by a talented writer.
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Summary: An Evocative study of tone's demise through depression
Review: I had heard of "The Bell Jar" for a long time before I picked it up to read it. My friend and fellow writer, Greg Goodsell, liked to read Sylvia Plath's work at the Open Mic's we attended. I would hear her name and think, "I am so woefully under-educated in these classics." For the past few years I have set to righting that wrong.
Sylvia Plath's tale of Esther Greenwood's stumble into insanity mirrors her own journey in many uncanny ways. It is not unlike the words of Virginia Woolf who wrote ""If one shuts one's eyes and thinks of the novel as a whole, it would seem to be a creation owning a certain looking-glass likeness to life."
Esther's life mirrors not only Plath's life, it also mirrors many others of us who have experienced depression. The voice is as clear and familiar as the rooms in my home - known intimately through daily experience. Plath's writing is evocative, clear and haunting.
We are witness to Esther's journey first as an intern at a woman's magazine - a highly coveted position - to her tumble into deep depression, hospitalization, and return to "the outside". We witness her continued losses (one of her friends succumbs to suicide, her experience of shock treatment, her first love relationships.
My favorite lines in the montage of tremendous lines are these, both from the final chapter::
"A fresh fall of snow blanketed the asylum grounds, not a Christmas sprinkle, but a man-high January deluge, the sort tha snuffs out schools and offices and churches, and leaves, for a day or more, a pure, blank sheet in place of memo pads, date books and calendars."
"I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am...."
This book is now used in many classrooms. This is a very good thing, to explore insanity as well as witness a writer capable of creating such beauty and at the same time, not being able to continue with her own life.
I would also suggest readers study Plath's poetry, my favorite collection being "Ariel". Finally, if you are especially taken with the life of Sylvia Plath, there is a DVD you may want to rent starring Gwyneth Paltrow in the lead role and is entitled "Sylvia." I found it to be highly telling and entertaining.
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Summary: An Amazing Book
Review: "The Bell Jar" by Silvia Plath, is a book about a girl named Esther Greenwood. She begins to go crazy after she returns home to Boston, from her summer job in New York. She finds that unreality is taking over her life. She makes several suicide attempts and is taken to a mental hospital to be treated.
I would highly reccommend "The Bell Jar". The author writes in an excellent style that makes Esther Greenwood's insanity seem so real. This is a tragic but wonderful and interesting book of how Esther lives her life with her insanity. She undergoes shock treatments at a mental hospital, but along the way, she meets new people and recalls back on some past experiences. I can guarantee that anyone who reads this book will love it just as I did, and will not be dissappointed.
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Summary: Finally! Something relatable...
Review: The Bell Jar is an insight into a young girl's mind and how life influenced the way she thought and how she acted. It's a very good read because everyone has been upset or depressed sometime in their life and this lets you know that there is someone else out there who is going through the same thing.
The prospect of chemistry also plays a major role in the book. Esther, the main character was affected by medicines and the behaviors of others which all played into why she was so lonely and suicidal. The novel goes into amazing detail of the current situation that Esther was in and how she reacted to them, it showed how she developed and grew with her experiences and how she finally overcame her illness. This novel is not only well written but it opens up a fictional character's heart and lets people examine it and therefore fully comprehend what is going on and why it's occurring. It informs people about depression and sparks their interest about it while using immense literary tactics to allow readers to truly enjoy the entire story.
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