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The fig tree is an apt image for all those moments of indecisive panic. It's a good quote. But there are so many other metaphors in The Bell Jar that so rarely get quoted.
- The Bell Jar
- The Fig Tree
- Headlines
- The Beating Heart
The bell jar is an inverted glass jar, generally used to display an object of scientific curiosity, contain a certain kind of gas, or maintain a vacuum. For Esther, the bell jar symbolizes madness. When gripped by insanity, she feels as if she is inside an airless jar that distorts her perspective on the world and prevents her from connecting with ...
Early in the novel, Esther reads a story about a Jewish man and a nun who meet under a fig tree. Their relationship is doomed, just as she feels her relationship with Buddy is doomed. Later, the tree becomes a symbol of the life choices that face Esther. She imagines that each fig represents a different life. She can only choose one fig, but becaus...
Chapter 16marks one of Esther’s most debilitating bouts with her illness. In this chapter, headlines are reprinted in the text of the novel. Joan gives Esther actual headlines from articles reporting Esther’s disappearance and attempted suicide. These headlines symbolize Esther’s exposure, her effect on others, and the gap between Esther’s interpre...
When Esther tries to kill herself, she finds that her body seems determined to live. Esther remarks that if it were up to her, she could kill herself in no time, but she must outwit the tricks and ruses of her body. The beating heart symbolizes this bodily desire for life. When she tries to drown herself, her heart beats, “I am I am I am.” It repea...
Sylvia Plath — ‘I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonder...
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. 981,710 ratings, 4.06 average rating, 58,730 reviews. The Bell Jar Quotes Showing 1-30 of 1,005. “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.
- Sylvia Plath, Frances Monson McCullough, Lois Ames
- 1963
She sees her life as a fig tree. The figs represent different life choices—a husband and children, a poet, a professor, an editor, a traveler—but she wants all of them and cannot choose, so the figs rot and drop off the tree uneaten.
The "bell jar" is a symbol that appears throughout the novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and it is a metaphor that Esther uses to explain how she feels suffocated by the world.
Find the quotes you need in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, sortable by theme, character, or chapter. From the creators of SparkNotes.
