Isolation and Alienation in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar Essay

In Sylvia Plaths redbrick novel, The Bell Jar, the main character Esther isolates and alienates herself throughout the maintain because she morally ill. Because her dip into a deep depression is slow and she leads a productive breeding when the reader first meets her, this descent seems rational to the reader in the beginning. Esther has an artsy soul. She is a writer and dreamer. When she does not make it into the create verbally program she is hoping for, she feels as though her bread and butter starts to lose purpose and we see her unwind.Esther is lucky enough to be spending a month in the summer in in the raw York as a scholarship winning junior editor/ detain for a ladies magazine but she does not enjoy this experience as much as she feels she should. Esther spends her evenings out and around in the glamorous city trying to forget most Buddy Willard, a boy she go out in college who developed tuberculosis. Esthers feelings of depression begin on this parapraxis as she loses interest in both her work and social life and only worsen with time.Esther begins to realize her feelings of deep discontent are not normal I knew something was wrong with me that summer, because all I could think about was the Rosenbergs and how stupid Id been to buy all those uncomfortable, expensive fit outand how all the little successes Id totted up so jubilantly at college fizzled to nothing along Madison Avenue. (Plath, 1-2) Although Esther understands there is something abnormal about her emotions, it takes her a while to realize how deeply mentally ill she actually is. Her peers are all happy and excited to be in stark naked York pursuing their future careers but Esther is unable to share their enthusiasm in any of it. Esther begins avoiding her friends and social situations and retreats further into her own thoughts and emotions.Esthers depression steady worsens once she returns home. She is devastated when she is informed she has been rejected from the writi ng program she planned on attending and is left unsure about what to do with her life. But when I took up my pen, my hand made big, jerky letters like those of a child, and the lines sloped down the page from left to right almost diagonally, as if they were loops of string lying on the paper, and someone had come along and pursy them askew. (Plath, 106) Esther starts noticing many odd changes with herself, such as a loss of writing talent and constant thoughts of suicide. She feels she is losing her identity as a writer and whence her grip on reality. Esther attempts suicide more than once and is dragged to several psychiatrists and mental institutions before landing in a private institution in the capable hands of Dr. Nolan who helps her slowly ascend from her suffocating bell jar.This book gives the reader a look inside what it is like to be earnestly mentally ill. Esther avoids everyone including those who used to be her best friends and attempts suicide more than once. That i s why alienation is the most outstanding theme in this novel.