Buddy, Buddy, Buddy

Something that we talked about in class recently was the fact that Esther is in a sort of emotional and mental bell jar that kind of distorts her view of people. Going along with that, I wanted to address that point and it in relation to how she portrays Buddy. These are just a bit of my (unorganized) thoughts to the topic.

Primarily, pretty early into the book, from the first moment we see him mentioned, Esther doesn’t depict him as that great of a person. Esther explained that from the beginning she had adored Buddy from a distance for a good number of years, and during that time, I think in her mind she kind of set an impossible standard for him to meet, and when he didn’t, she disliked him more and more. Also, I think like anyone his society molded him to be the person that he is, and the fact that Esther doesn’t really appreciate society that much, kind of translates over to her perception and description of Buddy. She depicts him as this dull, sort of awkward guy. One of those examples of disillusionment she gets with Buddy is right after she hears about his previous affair. “What I couldn’t stand was Buddy acting so pure, when all the time he’d been having an affair with that tarty waitress...” (Plath 71). She considers him a hypocrite because he makes himself out to be this really innocent person, but he really isn’t. I think she liked the idea of Buddy that she made in her head, because everyone was always telling her he was this great guy, but at the end of the day, she just didn’t find him compatible at all.

If we actually try to observe the parts where Buddy is mentioned in the books in an unbiased way, he doesn’t seem so bad. He reminds me of a sort of stereotypical average good guy of his time. He got good grades, went to a good school, and followed a solid profession. I’m not saying Buddy is perfect, because no one is, but he’s not this dull, phony person she makes him out to be. If feel kind of bad for Buddy when he asked Esther what is was about him that made women so crazy. For the first time we see Esther being in a better state mentally and emotionally, and it’s then that we see the first instance where we see Buddy show actual emotion and almost remorse. This sort of demonstrates that mixed with the fact that she was going through a lot of emotional turmoil and confusion, she slightly overplayed her distaste of Buddy,

Overall, this is just a bit of my muddled, and slightly unorganized thoughts on this topic. I think that Buddy wasn’t the persona Esther depicted him to be for the entirety of the novel, but he also wasn’t perfect, and he did have his questionable moments, but Esther’s bell jar did distort her perceptions of others.   

Esther is relatable

I was reading through some of the blog posts, and it kind of inspired me to talk about something that I’d picked up on about Esther as a character. My idea is pretty basic, but I wanted to develop it further.

There are aspects of Esther’s personality and circumstances that I find to be pretty relatable. One of the reasons why I’m enjoying this book a lot is because I feel like I understand Esther. Our reactions to certain situations are similar, and although I’m not always going through everything she is, I feel like I get where she’s coming from.

The first reason why I feel I can connect to Esther is because of her fear of deciding what to do in life. The conversation she had with Jay Cee kind of mirrors how I feel about choosing a major for college. “What I always thought I had in mind was getting some big scholarship to graduate school or a grant to study all over Europe, and then I thought I might be a professor and write books of poems and be an editor… ‘I don’t really know,” I heard myself say. I felt a deep shock, hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true.” A lot of adults lately have been asking me what I might want to go into, and when I was little, there were so many things that I had in mind. I wanted to be a linguist, a software developer, a doctor, or an engineer. Now I’m not so sure. I’m not against any of these per se, but now there are so many factors involved. Do I see myself doing this? How many years of school will I need to have done? What’s the average annual income of said profession?  

A second smaller aspect that I found relatable between us is our mutual need to excel academically. "I was taking one of those honors programs that teach you to think independently...Well, I studied those formulas, I went to class and watched balls roll down slides and listened to bells ring and by the end of the semester I had a straight A." Esther mentions that she is a hard worker and gets perfect grades and earns scholarships. We both a similar motivation in life when it comes to school. I found a parallel in my life through the fact that I’ve always pushed myself to be the best I could be in every academic scenario I was in. I feel like I understand her a bit more because we both started out as teacher’s pets and being goody-two-shoes.

Overall, this was just a small rant of how I see myself mirrored a bit in Esther, as we see her in the first half of the novel. She and I have similar motivations and issues in life. I also don't think this is something particular to just me, but I think others can connect with it as well.