Depression Essay, Research Paper

Part I

There are many different illnesses that have plagued people in the past, present, and will

continue on into the future. Most illnesses are physical, but there are also many that are mental.

Depression is found to be one of the most common mental illnesses known to man. Depression

breaks down one?s emotions to the point where nothing makes them happy and they feel life is

worthless. By reading ?Sylvia Plath? by Carol King Barnard, one can see how dramatically

change when they allow depression to control them when they have so much left to experience

in life. Sylvia Plath was blessed with the incredible talent of putting her feelings into words.

She took her experiences, good and bad, and arranged them in a way that everyone could relate

to. One can see Barnard?s accurate portrayal of the results of depression and how it alters one?s

self-worth by examining the difference in Plath?s early poetry and her late poetry.

Plath?s naive fascination with death appears in most of her early poems. Her early work

?displays a distinctly amateur, experimental quality? (36). Her early poetry was an important

building block that helped to mold her into the accomplished poet she became. Tragic events

that occurred in her childhood years were the basis of her suffering. Her father?s death played a

major role in her depression.

Plath brilliantly continues to emphasize death in her later works as well. These poems

show a deeper and more mature aspect on death. At this point in her life, her bitter divorce from

Ted Hughes is plaguing her poetry. Her pain and suffering ended when she met an untimely

death by committing suicide at the age of thirty-one. Plath and her work have been

immortalized to many women in society.

Part II (A)

Benigna Gerisch?s ?This Is Not Death, It Is Something Safer: A Psychodynamic

Approach To Sylvia Plath? in Death Studies revolves around female suicide, but in particular,

Sylvia Plath and the events that led to her suicide in nineteen sixty-three. The article describes

all aspects of Plath including her work, family relationships, and her marriage that ended in

bitter divorce from Ted Hughes. Plath?s dysfunctional family life was one apparent reason

behind her suicide. She had a strong resentment for her mother, brother , and father who had

?not only died early but was emotionally inaccessible and did not fulfill his daughter?s needs

adequately?(736).

Part II (B)

?Hollywood?s Scary Summer? in Newsweek deals with horror movies dominating the

silver screen in the summer of nineteen seventy-nine. This article summarizes the fact that the

?American public is clamoring for a fix of fright and the Hollywood pushers are converting

everyone?s bloodiest nightmares into box-office gold?(54). Gone are the days of the soda

shop flicks from the fifties and sixties. These days, it seems as though people would rather

spend their money on a good scream.

Part III (A)

Robert Scholes?s ?The Bell Jar ? in The New York Times is a book review of ?The Bell

Jar? by Sylvia Plath. Scholes goes on to describe? The Bell Jar? as ?the way this country was in

the nineteen fifties and about the way it is to lose one?s grip on reality and recover it again? (7).

Scholes questions Plath?s intentions when writing?Lady Lazarus? and ?Daddy?. The entire

article revolves around Esther Greenwood, narrator of the book.

Part III (B)

Laurie Johnston?s ?Artist?s Death : A Last Statement In A Thesis on ?Self-Termination??

in The New York Times is concerned with the suicide of Jo Roman. Roman was an artist

who?took her own life last Sunday in Manhattan after long and deliberate preparations ,

gathering inmates around her to help complete a ?life -sculpture? in a coffin-like pine box and to

drink champagne toasts in rite of farewell before she took an overdose of Seconal?(1). She was

terminally ill with breast cancer and refused to undergo a mastectomy. Her death is considered

to be her final artistic farewell.