All I could think about while reading this book was: it's incredible how Sylvia Plath managed to create a character so real, authentic, and coherent. A single person holds up the entire novel, a single person's mind (which might as well be thousands). A mind that is intelligent, astute, pragmatic, yet sinking deep into bleakness and dullness. The reader is taken on this difficult journey into the depths of depression, into the stifling bell jar, in a way that it suddenly all seems understandable.