The first sentence of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar alerts the reader to the conflicts that will be dealt with in this semi-autobiographical novel: "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York." The speaker will tell us in the next few sentences that she is "stupid" and that she feels "sick," and that she is preoccupied with death. Like Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, this young, college age, girl-woman is experiencing an adolescent crisis.
Summer is usually thought of as being a happy, fun time for students. It is a time of vacation from studies, a time to travel and relax, have fun with friends. Sometimes students work, but even that is a short-term commitment, and thus more relaxed. The speaker of The Bell Jar has gone to New York City for a month, and she will relate her varied "fun" experiences to us, but she is not happy. She works, too, but not with any pleasure. Indeed, she is confused and is in conflict with all aspects of her life.
When Esther Greenwood tells us in the first sentence that this is "the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs," we get a picture not only of that summer's being nauseating, sultry, and death-oriented, but that this young girl's attitudes and life experiences are also this way. She is not a happy, carefree coed off for a summer fling, even if it appears that way. She is about to have a major nervous breakdown.
Esther Greenwood is steeped in the "mirage-gray at the bottom of their granite canyons"; her New York world is filled with images of cadavers. For example, she says, "I knew something was wrong with me that summer" and then proceeds to tell us about how she skips the social events that she is supposed to attend, how she is called into her editor's office, and how she and her friends get violently sick from tainted food. In between her account of her job, which she "won" through a fashion magazine contest, she recounts her past and her recent college experiences. She goes into detail about her reactions to her chemistry classes, which she calls "death," and how she schemed so that she did not have to take chemistry for credit. She also tells us that her boyfriend, Buddy Willard, a pre-med student, showed her a cadaver.
