The Bell Jar

by Sylvia Plath

salute.

must be just about the only person who had stayed awake for a solid month without dropping dead of exhaustion.

I thought drowning must be the kindest way to die, and burning the worst.

That morning I had tried to hang myself.

And I thought of how my mother and brother and friends would visit me, day after day, hoping I would be better. Then their visits would slacken off, and they would give up hope. They would grow old. They would forget me.

Then I remembered that I had never cried for my father’s death.

‘Don’t you want to get up today?’ ‘No.’ I

I knew I should be grateful to Mrs Guinea, only I couldn’t feel a thing.

I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.

‘Belsize,’ I said. ‘I can’t go there.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘I’m not ready. I’m not well enough.’

The bell jar

‘I like you.’ ‘That’s tough, Joan,’ I said, picking up my book. ‘Because I don’t like you. You make me puke, if you want to know.’

I was my own woman.

the corruption of Buddy Willard

I smiled into the dark. I felt part of a great tradition.

The heart of winter!

and the story of the fig-tree

But they were part of me. They were my landscape.

I am, I am, I am.