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When Esther found out that Buddy spent a summer sleeping with a waitress while dating her but expects Esther to remain a virgin until they get married, she broke up with him. This made Esther very angry and confused about her future and eventually led to her depression. (Plath, 81)īuddy told Esther that when she starts a family, her passion to write poetry would fade. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed.
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I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. In her heart, Esther wanted to write poetry, but because this was totally against her society’s belief, she felt very alienated. Everyone expected her to marry Buddy and this placed pressure on Esther and she began questioning what she really wanted. Her relationship with Buddy also gained the approval of her mother. Her intelligence earned her scholarships, prizes, amazing opportunities and respect, but her classmates mocked her studiousness and only began to show respect when she started dating a handsome and liked boy. Esther was pulled between her desire to write poetry and her other desire to start a family. The society in the 1950s had conventional beliefs and expectations of a woman’s role and identity, which was to get married and have children. The setting of both stories was in the 1950s America. This is exemplified through loss, failure and alienation.įirstly, a difficulty that both Esther and Holden go through is feeling alienated from their society and rebelling against them. A common theme in The Bell Jar and Catcher in the Rye is the difficulties of growing up.
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The Bell Jar has been said to be a feminine version of The Catcher in the Rye. They have many similar experiences throughout their adolescent and thus similar themes. Holden and Esther are parallel characters their stories have been compared with each other multiple times. This gives us a more personal view, description and observations of their experiences and lets us go through their journey through adolescent with them. Both books are written from the first person’s perspective. Esther Greenwood from The Bell Jar and Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye are those of the less fortunate and had bad experiences through their adolescence. Some sail through it with happy memories to last a lifetime but others did not realize that it was going to be very stressful and tough. Everybody experiences this period differently. It is a transition period between one’s childhood to being an adult. Adolescence in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell JarĪnd J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in the RyeĪdolescence is one of the most difficult periods of many people’s lives.