The Bell Jar

What terms does Esther use to describe herself?

How does she compare or contrast herself with Doreen andothers in New York City, or with Joan and other patients in the hospital?

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Last updated by jill d #170087
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perhaps--- I am I am I am

"Zombie"

"Numb trolly bus"

"The heroine, Esther Greenwood, appears to have everything she needs to be happy. She has won the chance to spend a month in New York working on a magazine, attending parties and generally living the high-life. Yet she does not feel she is in control, she feels rather that she is doing all this because it is expected of her, it is what she has been programmed from childhood to do, instead being what she herself wants to do. This feeling is reflected by words suggesting a kind of automaton existence early in the novel, such as describing herself as a 'zombie' and a 'numb trolley bus'."

Source(s)

http://www.english-literature.org/essays/plath_walker.php