The Last Chapter of The Bell Jar...Lots of questions, with few answers
"'We'll take up where we left off, Esther' ... 'We'll act as if all this were a bad dream.' A bad dream." (Plath 237) Ronald Reagan would be elected approximately 6 years after this speech. Is it a bad dream? Everything? Can all 6 months of Esther's harrowing journey be as fleeting, as ethereal, as...intangible...as a dream? In the future of Esther's life, how will she see the events of The Bell Jar ? What will it mean to her? How will it tangibly affect her? What happens to the past? --- Is it starting where you left off? Esther speaks to this idea of "starting, after a six months' lapse, where I had so vehemently left off" (Plath 236), and we know that her mother definitely wants Esther to do that, forgetting about the past and continuing with your life. Pretend that the past six months never happened, and move on down the path which you were originally on. Yet, we know that can never really happen, as much as some m