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Similes
Key Examples in The Bell Jar
Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis:
The style of The Bell Jar is deeply personal and reflective, focusing on Esther’s own mental state as she moves through high-society environments in New York City and then returns to her small hometown in the Boston suburbs. Esther spends much of her time alone before she is moved to a mental health care facility, and she reflects extensively on her own feelings of loneliness and alienation:
The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence. I knew perfectly well the cars were making a noise, and the people in them and behind the lit windows of the buildings were making a noise, and the river was making a noise, but I couldn’t hear a thing. The city hung in my window, flat as a poster, glittering and blinking, but it might just as well not have been there at all, for the good it did me.
