Theme & Symbols

One possible theme in The Bell Jar is Esther's growth through rebirth. She undergoes pain and many experiences, and instead of learning from all of her experiences, she wants to die instead of starting new and fresh and going on with her life. She doesn't want to life a false life--she wants to find herself. Instead, she gets really frustrated because she feels inadequate a lot of the time. She doesn't want to conform to the average life of getting a husband and a family. Once she tries to commit suicide, she emerges finally as a new person... it helped her survive because she went through rebirth in a sense that she wanted to live again.

Another possible theme is womanhood and how the conventional aspects of it restrict women. In the novel, Esther doesn't want to be like anyone else. She wants to live her life and continue on being successful in her scholastics. However, it is because of all of her relationships and false pretenses that she feels like she is not living in reality because she is expecting to have one thing and is getting another. For example, there is emptiness in how conventional growth and womanhood should be: healthy relationships. Esther comes out of everything bothered and disturbed, like everything is going wrong in her life. All of this leads madness because she is confronted with many failures--from relationships to work. Also, there is that sense of restriction with what she wants to do with her life...she sees only two extremes in every situation instead of satisfying mediums. She feels pressured about her future and has anxiety...should she have a family? or, should she be alone yet successful in her writing? She also has anxiety about having sexual relations with men which also contributes to her sense of not belonging since everything that happened with buddy willard...

One symbol is the Bell Jar. A Bell Jar is a glass jar that is inverted to contain whatever is inside of it. In the novel, it symbolizes Esther's insanity and madness because she feels trapped inside of it. She feels like she cant breath as she loses her mind (cant eat, sleep, read, or write...). once she tries to commit suicide, she feels like a new person and feels like she's out from under the bell jar...but even then, she knows it could drop on her again any second.

Another symbol is the fig tree. It comes into perspective in the novel when she reads a story about a fig tree. To her, all of the figs on the tree each represent a different life which she could pursue. However, she doens't know what she wants. all of this contributes to her madness as she is surrounded by indecisiveness.

"I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant loosing all the rest, and as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet." -The Bell Jar

Another symbol could possibly by Esther's beating heart. Even though she tries to kill herself, she lives. This could represent her heart's desire to life and go on with her life. She says in the story that if it were completely up to her, she would definitely end her life... but she knows in her heart that it is truly her desire to go on.