The Bell Jar Symbolism, Imagery & Allegory

It's pretty obvious from the title that the bell jar is a huge symbol in the book. So huge that it deserves its own section. So we're listing the bell jar under "Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory" just...

In Chapter 5, Esther flips open an anthology of short stories, and instantly connects with a story about a Jewish man and a Catholic nun who meet under a fig tree. (The story is a twist on the Bibl...

The novel stresses Esther's personal crisis by repeatedly showing how she doesn't recognize herself in the mirror and in photographs of herself: she's lost all sense of who she is. When Esther fina...

The novel opens with Esther's obsession with a gruesome electrocution, which signals ahead to Esther's experiences with electroshock therapy, and also to her memory of being electrocuted by her fat...

Every once in a while, a headline from one of Esther's tabloids is splashed across the page, interrupting the regular flow of the material. And you might notice that these headlines look a lot like...

The "bell jar" of the novel's title finds its parallel in the many places of confinement in the novel. The hospitals where Esther stays, Buddy's tuberculosis sanatorium, and the Deer Island prison...