The Bell Jar

by Sylvia Plath

[Joséphine]

Initial thoughts: To this day mental health is difficult to grasp. It is impossible to measure it or to put it to any sort of scale. When is someone mentally healthy? At what point does mental illness kick in? When someone starts to harm themselves or others around them? By then it's too late, isn't it?

The Bell Jar is a very thought-provoking portrayal of a descent into madness. At times, Esther sounded so logical despite the consensus of the people around her that something was amiss. In fact, Esther asked a lot of questions that I ask myself rather regularly. As one of my professors liked to say, "Aren't we all a little bit crazy?"

As deep as The Bell Jar turned out to be, some of the characters were such caricatures, they ended up fairly underdeveloped.