The Bell Jar - Second Half

I can't help but think it weird when Esther thinks she's outsmarting her pyschiatrists. Like when she sits there in the doctor's office and thinks she's clever because she's not mentioning a letter she wrote that would show how bad her handwriting has become, but then she throws the torn pieces of the letter on the desk and then again picks them all up so that he couldn't show them to her mother. Wouldn't this kind of behavior only make it more obvious that she has an issue?

Why is it that Esther only stops eating, sleeping, reading, and writing after she gets home from her New York trip? Could it be that depression (a result of her rejection from that summer writing course and having to leave New York to return to her home where she would have to continue a dull life (even though she didn't do too much when she actually was in NY) served as a trigger for madness in her brain?

It seems a bit surreal that everyone around Esther is either a doctor or ill in some way; Buddy Willard has TB, Joan ends up in the same asylum/institution as Esther; it's almost as if Sylvia Plath is trying to create a scenario where one character's illness spreads to infect another in a different way, just as madness affects everyone around it.

Overall, The Bell Jar was a good read, though I wouldn't want to read it again for reasons I can't quite put my finger on...

The Bell Jar - First Half

Every now and again throughout the first half of the novel, usually in a simile or metaphor, something is described in a way that suggests death and depression. The receiver of a phone fits in a bone-colored cradle, Esther feels as if she belongs in a sanatorium, and the date of an athlete's trophy is like the date on a tombstone. What I have to wonder is whether or not the author of the novel unknowingly slipped these subtle descriptions into her work, or was the foreshadowing of Esther's madness intentional? Of course, the only person who could answer that question for sure is Sylvia Plath herself, and she isn't in any shape to answer any questions...
I think the reason Esther makes up new names for herself (Elly, Ee Gee, Elaine) is because she has no sense of who she is and is constantly searching for her identity, which is why she doesn't know what she wants to do after college, due to each possible job representing a new identity and she does not know which job to take, which identity to assume. Also, when she tells someone her name is something other than Esther (Elly, for example), she soon appears to begin believing her own lies and that she IS Elly, which further implies madness, such as schizophrenia.
In an unnerving, creepy sort of way, the novel is still interesting, and Sylvia Plath's writing style is...unique, unlike one I've ever seen before (and for me, that's saying a lot), characterized by her madness as it is. Any author can write about a person who has gone mad (I've considered the idea myself), but I suppose no one can capture the reality or the intensity of madness except one who has experienced it first-hand. Oh, and Buddy Willard is a moron, but that's not really important right now.