/lit/ - Literature

Whoa dude. Book report?

>>605548
No, I thought /lit/ might be interested in a review of the book and want share their own thoughts if they've read it.

Sylvia Plath should have died choking on a dick like she deserved.

you do not do
you do not do
any more black shoe

>>606122

I was surprised when I discovered that Plath was actually kind of hot.

>>606125

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

>>604272

Cool story bro.

I kid. I love the shit out of The Bell Jar.

>>604272
>Keep in mind she published this book under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas because she did not consider it a serious work - it was meant to be playful, light, unimportant, and put her past behind her.

Pretty sure it was because Plath herself thought it was nothing more than a potboiler and it'd harm her reputation as a poet.

"Practically every character in The Bell Jar represents someone—often in caricature—whom Sylvia loved... as this book stands by itself, it represents the basest ingratitude. That was not the basis of Sylvia's personality; it was the reason she became so frightened when, at the time of the publication, the book was widely read and showed signs of becoming a success. Sylvia wrote her brother that "this must never be published in the United States."

It's on my to-read list and I've certainly heard good things. What's the general plot?

Btw, the fig tree metaphor has been done- see Bible

>>606137
20 year-old girl (book never states this, though it is based on Plath's life and she would have been twenty at the time it takes place) is basically on top of the world with an internship at a fictional Mademoiselle, but she's incredibly unhappy and lonely. She hates her life because 1950s society sucks. Shit progressively gets worse. Then she tries a few hearthearted suicide attempts, then a serious attempt. She's institutionalized and resolves her issues. The ending is left open-ended, but pretty much anyone will tell you that Esther turns out okay because in the first few pages she mentions her child.

>>606137
>fig tree has been done
The fig tree bit was based off of a short story she read in the book (and presumably in real life, because the story mirrored her life so closely). It was a story of an old Jewish man and an old Catholic nun who picked figs from the same fig tree every day. They never spoke but always came at the same time, picking their figs. One day, their hands touched as they reached for the same fruit. She blushed, he blushed, and they both withdrew their hands. The next day, the old nun did not come to pick figs. It was another woman from the nunnery instead, a rough, angry woman, and she did not like the old man.

>>606142
It's not really that 1950's society sucks that makes her upset.

She's about to face huge changes in her life, transitioning from a schoolgirl with a clear, well-defined path to an adult who has to figure everything out for themselves. She has many dreams and feels unqualified for them all. Her whole education she has gotten great grades, won awards, earned scholarships, but she knows that none of that matters in the world she is about to enter. Her internship makes her realize that real jobs are boring, much like school, and she's not sure what to do about it.

I'm about to graduate from college and feel pretty much the same way. I've been on the educated-at-university track since childhood and still am not sure what I want to do. Like her, I want to travel, explore, become worldly, pick up languages, have adventures -- but instead I'm saddled with thousands of dollars in school loans and the prospect of working for years in jobs I don't truly enjoy before I can pursue what I think might be my dreams. Really, though, they are just fantasies -- I have no idea if I'd enjoy a river-boat ride through the Amazon or living with natives in Africa. Probably I'd hate it. But it's still on my list.

At last, a mildly serious Plath thread. I'm way too fucking lazy to participate, though. Read this when I was quite young; the scene in which she almost bleeds to death when her hymen broke scarred me for life, now I half expect every woman I touch to bleed out.

>>606157
>It's not really that 1950's society sucks that makes her upset.

It's that and she has no fucking clue what to do with her life. She doesn't think it's possible to be a wife/mother and a poet because all married women did was raise babies. She has to be a virgin for a future husband or she'll be a slut and no one wants a slut. It's okay for men like Buddy Willard to live two lives, one pure and one not, while women were forced to live one pure life.

>>606162
>Read this when I was quite young; the scene in which she almost bleeds to death when her hymen broke scarred me for life, now I half expect every woman I touch to bleed out.
>now I half expect every woman I touch to bleed out
>laughing elf man.jpg

Anyone know where I can download a free ebook of this?

>>606195
#bookz almost surely.

There's also a sharing thread somewhere, a few pages back. 90% chance it has this.

>>606195
ｉＴｕｎｅｓ