oh sylvia

Sylvia Plath has been one of my favourite authors for a really long time. I don't even remember how I first found her breathtaking and fragile words. The Bell Jar is one of the most important books for me.

Not only because of the story I can definitely relate to, but because that book holds inside the covers a world that is totally different from ours but yet still so similar. The protagonist's mental illness (even depression or bipolar disorder) reminds very much Sylvia herself. This book is one of a kind.

This is one of my favourite parts of this novel. It's just so resplendent and explanatory.

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. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Chapter 7