Present the way in which imprisonment is presented in The Bell Jar Essa

Present the way in which imprisonment is presented in The Bell Jar The bell jar is an inverted glass jar, generally used to display an object of scientific curiosity. Present the way in which imprisonment is presented in ‘The Bell Jar’ The bell jar is an inverted glass jar, generally used to display an object of scientific curiosity, contain a certain kind of gas, or maintain a vacuum. For Esther, the bell jar symbolizes madness. When gripped by insanity, she feels as if she is inside an airless jar that distorts her perspective on the world and prevents her from connecting with the people around her. At the end of the novel, the bell jar has lifted, but she can sense that it still hovers over her, waiting to drop at any moment. The narrative technique used in The Bell Jar is a first person narrative. Straight away we get the idea of imprisonment through elements of the unhappy narrative voice in the early chapters. The first sentence of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar alerts the reader to the conflicts that will be dealt with in this semi-autobiographical novel: "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenberg’s, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York." The speaker will tell us in the next few sentences that she is "stupid" and that she feels "sick," and that she is preoccupied with death. Like Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, this young, college age, girl-woman is experiencing an adolescent crisis. When Esther Greenwood tells us in the first sentence that this is "the summer they electrocuted the Rosenberg’s," we get a picture not only of that summer's being nauseating, sultry, and death-oriented, but that this young girl's attitudes and life experiences are ... ...e Plath uses characters such as buddy Willard, using a clever writing technique to show his relationship with others, how people viewed him, his actions and physical description. Through Buddy we can have a better understanding of Esther’s situation. Plath uses the technique of flashback for suspense and to delay the plot. A lot of similes and metaphors are used to contribute to imprisonment. For example similes reflecting the 1950’s ‘yellow as cinnamon’. Overall, I think that Plath is trying to convey the idea that women were being placed in a constricted role in society live as if in a bell jar, able to see the outside world of exciting work and self-determined men, but unable to live it. People suffering from emotional illness are also living as if under a bell jar, isolated from others and unable to escape the distortions of their view of the world.