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Analyzing Joan's Existence in the Bell Jar

Joan is possibly the most covertly hated character in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.  At first, she's a somewhat distant friend that appears in Esther's asylum, which she takes as a joke. As time goes on, she gets more and more annoyed and begins to compare herself to Joan. This begins because Joan has also dated Buddy Willard and has a direct connection to Esther's life in society, and she hates Joan because she seems better than Esther. More specifically, she's jealous because "Joan had walk privileges, Joan had shopping privileges, Joan had town privileges. I gathered all my news of Joan into a little, bitter heap, though I received it with surface gladness. Joan was the beaming double of my old best self, specially designed to follow and torment me" (108). She also hates her because she's part of the crowd that, in Esther's head, singles her out-- she's sure they're talking about "how awful it was to have people like me in Belsize an...
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Who would Holden be as an adult?

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While I was reading the Catcher in the Rye, a major thing I wondered about was: who would Holden end up being later in life, if he grew up to be an adult and had to accept his realities– was forced to grow up, even? Like, does he ever actually become “the catcher in the rye” in his own view of things? I also wondered if Holden being an adult would make him phony, in his own eyes? Or does he just avoid any and all concepts of adulthood? First of all, I think Holden wouldn't really think of himself as an adult in the first place, and therefore avoids the potential crisis of being phony. He does seem to want to become a figure with some responsibility at some point, saving kids by being the catcher in the rye and imagining himself as a kind of hero. “I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye… and I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff,” (156). This moment show...
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