The Bell Jar Reflection #10

Chapters 12-13 (pgs. 115-138)

Esther and her mother go to Dr. Gordon’s special hospital so that she can have her shock treatment done.  Esther notices that everything and everybody in the hospital is still and quiet.  She expects to see bars on the windows, but instead it just looks like a normal house to her.  After waiting a while, Dr. Gordon comes to get Esther.  He takes her upstairs and Esther sees a woman saying that she is going to jump out of the window; Esther now realizes that the windows upstairs are barred.  They remove Esther’s jewelry and put her in a machine.  She says the pain is terrible and that she is not okay. 

When she wakes up from her treatment, her mother and Mrs. Dodo Conway are there to drive her home.  She gets home and tells her mother that she is done with Dr. Gordon and his silly treatments.  Her mother is relieved because she thinks that Esther is finally getting better, but she is actually getting much worse.  Esther gets home and is exhausted being as she has not slept in twenty one days.  She has finally hit rock bottom and take out her fourteen Gillette razor blades and attempts to kill herself; however she just can’t bring herself to cut her delicate wrists.  She states that” It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, a whole lot harder to get at.” (pg.121)  As I was reading, this book really started to frighten me and I got scared while reading it alone in my room at night so I had to put it up. 

 Esther begins to get even crazier in the next chapter.  She goes to the beach with her friend Jody and two guys and attempts to drown herself.  She also recalls trying to hang herself that morning with her mother’s yellow robe tie, but she could not find anything to hang the tie on.  Esther’s mother gets worried about her so she gets Esther to volunteer at a local hospital.  Esther goes and gets assigned to pass out flowers on the maternity hall.  Some of the women are rude to Esther and she runs home and says that “It’s time.”  I assume that meant that it was time for her to kill herself because she leaves a note for her mother saying she has gone for a long walk and she crawls into a dark hole in the cellar and takes fifty of her sleeping pills one by one until she starts seeing things and falls into a deep sleep.

http://www.malewitch.com/articles/suicide-is-not-the-answer.html