CoPo

Since we recently read Plath in class, I decided to pick up The Bell Jar from the bookstore last night. The next day, I’m nearly finished. I reccomend this to everyone in the class who wants more of an understanding of Sylvia Plath.

After Plath died, a lot of readers saw her book as “speaking from beyond the grave,” in the cliche used by the book’s publisher. I know we can’t use her novel to determine why she committed suicide or other questions about her life, but even so, the book has definately helped me understand her poetry.

For example, “Two Views of a Cadaver Room” is illuminated when you find how, in The Bell Jar, the narrator (and potentially Plath)  dated a medical student who showed her an operating room of dead bodies, complete with dead babies in jars. She also talks extensivetly in the novel about her father, who died when she was nine. She impliesthat a lot of the suriving family’s money troubles came from her late father’s distrust of life insurance salesmen. This may have contributed towards Plath’s animousity towards her father in her poems. And overall, from reading the book I have found it easier to understand the unique way in which Plath viewed the world.

Original post by lauren