Ben's Blogging Shed

     Bruce's death is one of the most important events in this book and a lot of Alison's reflections and contemplations revolve around it. She specifically mentions how she sees that her coming out is linked with his death, and while that's probably true to some extent and it makes a sense in the narrative of Fun Home , based on what she says in the book I still don't think it was actually a suicide. The main reasons Alison gives for it being intentional is how her coming out seems to have caused the divorce which drove him to suicide (Bechdel 58-59) There's also the constant theme throughout the book that Bruce more or less failed his coming of age due his staying closeted, and that that sense of failure could have also driven him to suicide, and the sense that he kind of felt trapped in Beech Creek (Bechdel 125) However, Alison also gives us reason to believe it wasn't a suicide: she mentions that Bruce jumped back in front of the truck like he'd seen a s...

    One of the more important questions that the ending of the The Bell Jar  leaves unanswered is to what extent the bell jar Esther felt trapped by is really gone. Esther herself even acknowledges this, "How did I know that someday … the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?" (Plath, 241). It's unclear to if it's even entirely gone by this point, and it's possible it could just be replaced by another one. Esther also mentions on page 238 that the other girls at college were under a different kind of bell jar. Esther's college experience has been one where she felt very trapped by the pressure on her to succeed and to have a plan for her future, so in that way the entire academic world has been somewhat of a bell jar for her. However, she seems to be more or less back to her old self by the end of the book, but with a different outlook on the world.     Adding to the fear of the bell jar is Buddy's comment about who Esther wo...