The Silver Linings Playbook Chapter 20

The Implied endpointThat night I try to record The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Nikki used to talk about how important Plaths myth is, formulateing, Every fresh woman should be forced to read The Bell Jar. I had mummy check it out of the library, mostly because I want to watch women so I can relate to Nikkis feelings and whatnot.The cover of the book looks pretty girly, with a dried rose hung upside down, suspended over the title.Plath mentions the Rosenbergs execution on the first page, at which point I know Im in for a depressing read, because as a former hi stratum teacher, I understand respectable how depressing the Red Scare was, and McCarthyism too. Soon after fashioning a reference to the Rosenbergs, the narrator starts talking about cadavers and confabulateing a severed head while eating breakfast.The main character, Esther, has a replete(p) internship at a New York City magazine, but she is depressed. She uses fake call with the men she meets. Esther sort of has a boyfriend named Buddy, but he treats her dismally and makes her feel as though she should have babies and be a lady of the house rather than become a writer, which is what she wants to be.Eventually Esther breaks down and is given electroshock therapy, tries to kill herself by taking too many sleeping pills, and is move to a negative place like the one I was in.Esther refers to a black man who serves food in her bad place as the Negro. This makes me think about Danny and how mad the book would make my black friend, in particular because Esther was white and Danny says only black people can use polemic racial terms such as Negro.At first, even though it is really depressing, this book excites me because it deals with mental health, a topic I am very interested in learning about. Also, I want to see how Esther gets better, how she will eventually influence her silver lining and get on with her life. I am sure Nikki assigns this book so that depressed puerile girls will see th eres hope if you just hold on ache enough.So I read on.Esther loses her virginity, hemorrhages during the process, and almost bleeds to death like Catherine in A Farewell to Arms and I do wonder why women are always hemorrhaging in American literature. But Esther lives, only to find that her friend Joan has hung herself. Esther attends the funeral, and the book ends just as she steps into a populate full of therapists who will decide if Esther is healthy enough to leave her bad place.We do not get to see what happens to Esther, whether she gets better, and that made me very mad, peculiarly after reading all night.As the sun begins to shine with my bedroom window, I read the biographical sketch at the bum of the book and find out that the whole novel is basically the story of Sylvia Plaths life and that the author eventually stuck her head in an oven, killing herself just like Hemingway only without the gun which I understand is the implied ending of the book, since everyon e knows the novel is really Sylvia Plaths memoir.I actually rip the book in half(prenominal) and throw the two halves at my bedroom wall.Basement.Stomach Master 6000. fin hundred crunches.Why would Nikki make teenagers read such a depressing novel?Weight bench.Bench press.One-hundred-thirty-pound reps.Why do people read books like The Bell Jar?Why?Why?Why?Im surprise when Tiffany shows up the next day for our sunset run. I dont know what to say to her, so I say nothing like usual.We run.We run once again the next day too, but we dont discuss the comments Tiffany made about my wife.