Wednesday, October 24, 2012

The Bell Jar Gone High School Musical

I was listening to my Pandora station when this song by the Bangles came on. I'm not sure if it was written about Sylvia Plath's book, but it really resinates with some of the depressive behaviors we have been talking about in class. The end of the song, however, does not mirror the end of the novel. The song ends with the girl in the bell jar suffocating, being choked by her own paranoia. I took Esther's entrance into the meeting at the end of the book to be a symbol of recovery. What do you think?

Here are the lyrics and a link to the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrwIu3ygTyY



She walks in the room
And checks out the faces
We think she's all the seven wonders of the world
But there's a sadness
Hidden in the bizarre
Moonlight and madness
Living in a bell jar
She dresses in black
'Cause sorrow is a magnet
Everything comes to her like it was meant to be
But she's frustrated
Leaving things as they are
What she created
Living in a bell jar
She feels so at home
She's never alone
But she's oh so lonely
What is the crime
In knowing your mind
Set it free
Attached to a mirror
In her glass-sided prison
She writes the note that will excuse her from this world
It's complicated
Living in a bell jar
She suffocated
Living in a bell jar

1 comment:

  1. I think that it's really interesting how much this song relates to Esther's life not just in the lyrics, but in the music as well. The tone of the song is very loud and hectic. These loud, crazy noises are what I imagine Esther's mind sounds like. It is weird how the song ends in a different way then the book though. If it is about Plath's novel, I think that the band may have saw the end of the book to be a sort of "suffocation" for Esther. She is being "healed" by the doctors, but maybe that isn't such a good thing. Society wants her to be less "crazy" so they try to heal her, but they can't be sure that her "craziness" isn't normal. Maybe the band/ person who wrote this song saw her healing as a "suffocation" because she is being stuffed into the box that society believes people should belong in. In this world, people like Esther can't be themselves.

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