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Perspective In The Bell Jar By Sylvia Plath

Decent Essays

Significance of Perspective Meaning is mutable for all aspects of life, and it is important to consider how meaning varies in the eyes of each and every person. No matter what you do, it is impossible to utterly view the perspective of another person. Often perspective is shaped by one’s experiences, and because of this, the combination of experiences for one person will never be exactly the same as another person. The importance of perspective is particularly significant in the case of the main character, Esther, in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. This text goes through Esther’s struggle with a mental illness; Plath demonstrates the progression of Esther’s illness through her daily life and the challenge she must face in order to overcome her own trapped sense of self. …show more content…

While Esther feels trapped within her own thoughts, unable to escape regardless of what goes on in her surroundings; people around her often cannot truly understand the extent of the depression inside her head. Her mother is one person in particular who will never understand what is going on in her daughter’s head. Near the end of Esther’s time at a psychiatric hospital, her mother wishes to treat the whole experience as a bad dream, but Esther knows otherwise. To Esther, she says, “But under the deceptively clean and level slate the topography was the same…” (Plath 236). Through this, Esther is saying that no matter what attempts are made to cover up her illness, her experiences will always remain the same

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