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Esther Greenwood is the main character in the novel The Bell Jar. She is a young woman who is struggling to find her place in the world. She is intelligent and creative, but she feels like she is not living up to her potential. She is also dealing with mental health issues, which make it difficult for her to function in society.
1. “The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it.”
2. “I began to think everybody was a phony but me.”
3. “The Bell Jar began to descend, its stifling weight bearing me down.”
4. “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. 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 losing 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.”
5.”I can’t describe it, but the Bell Jar gave me a feeling of being trapped under a glass bell jar, suffocating. Asphyxiating. It was a bell jar of depression.”