YKnow what I mean

He yells and inflicts threats of violence on his children for breaking an ornament in his house or not properly putting up a Christmas tree. He gets into violent arguments with his wife for coming home late. He rarely expresses any form of love or attachment to his family. Honestly, he hardly acts like a father at all. Throughout the book, we learn about Bruce's past, which allowed us to piece together what may have caused him to be so absent from his family. Here's my take on it. Basically, Bruce's physical life was a socially-acceptable version of a life that aligns with his true interests. Decorating his house was a way of encoding and expressing his femininity. His love letters to his wife (girlfriend at the time) were reenactments of quotes/personalities of Fitzerald, who he was obsessed with. Further, his job as an English teacher gave him a formal justification for engaging with his favorite books. Meanwhile, the personal relationships that came along with his ...

One of the most unique aspects of The   Bell Jar  is that it provides a detailed description of the process that Esther goes through as she "breaks down" from her state as a high-achieving, promising next-generation poet to a person who makes multiple attempts of suicide and later ends up in a mental health facility. Although Esther's story sounds like a very extreme case of what high social expectations and the pressure to continually run after external validation may do to a young person coming of age, I think the overall framework of the environment and life as a youth that she comes from has strong similarities with the situation that many teens today are experiencing. Here, I outline some key points that help us define the context that led her to break down from the beginning of her New York internship.   Before the breakdown While she's doing the internship in New York, Esther effectively condenses her life since childhood into one sentence: “all my life I...