Suicide In Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar And The Catcher In The Rye

What causes a person to believe taking their own life is the only option? The topic of Suicide is present both Sylvia Plath and J.D. Salinger’s novels; The Bell Jar and The Catcher in the Rye. The authors express the theme of a connection to death that leads to the protagonists of the novel to consider suicide. The author 's ' purposes are to show the main characters throughout the novel see themselves at an all-time low with their mental state deteriorating leads them to believe suicide is an option.

In Sylvia Plath 's novel, The Bell Jar, Plath describes the story of Esther Greenwood’s life, who undergoes a mental crisis and falls into a deep, dark depression. Plath’s message to the reader is to understand why Esther attempts to kill herself. In the middle of the novel, Esther has isolated herself at her mother’s house, and Esther’s psychiatrist sends her to Dr. Gordon’s private hospital because Esther has not been sleeping and already tried to kill herself. When leaving the hospital, Esther describes the scene as “[she] walked out into the sun. Panther-like in a dapple of tree shadow, Dodo Conway’s black station wagon lay in wait” (Plath 145). Plath uses the symbolism of the black station wagon as a comparison to a hearse, a car specializes in transporting dead bodies, to demonstrate she is still in a depressed state of mind and the nearby future, Esther will attempt to kill herself. Plath provides evidence that Esther is already in an unstable mind and by isolating