Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar: A Podcast Script
TL;DR: A script about Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar for a podcast episode produced by The Improving Co., in an ongoing series about famous literary works in the English language.
Target Audience: Advanced English-language learners at bilingual high schools in Spain; English coordinators and teachers.
Tone: informative, neutral, casual.
Intention: Encourage students to read the books.
Imagine there’s a giant fig tree. It represents you and the many different versions of your life. You’re the trunk, and each fig on every branch is a different destiny you can choose. All options look delicious: one fig is you becoming a sports star or a famous artist; another fig is you starting a new business, or going into law, medicine, digital marketing, artificial intelligence—there is a fig for every attractive future you can imagine.
The thing is, you can’t seem to decide which one to choose because you fear missing out on all the rest. What’s more, you don’t have all the time in the world to make your choice, and you’re worried that if you take too long to choose, all of the fruit will spoil. Because you can’t choose one, you’re panicking about having none. Imagine that, dying of starvation despite being surrounded by so much food!
The fig tree as a metaphor for choosing one’s path in life comes from The Bell Jar, a seminal coming-of-age book about a young woman growing up in the United States. It was written by one of America’s most beloved poets: Sylvia Plath. In fact, this book was Plath’s only novel; she mainly wrote poetry.
The Bell Jar covers many topics, aside from one’s coming of age. It gives us a picture of American society in the 1950s. Plath portrays a world of glamour, materialism, and gender inequality while exploring the nature of depression and mental illness. We connect with her words because they capture the human condition, in all its complexity and confusion, but with a voice that allows us to laugh, even as we cry.
And while times have certainly changed since the 1950s, many of the fundamental issues Plath was dealing with still ring true even today, starting with the simple but difficult existential question of what one wants to do with their life.
When thinking about her fig tree metaphor, you see that the problem with choice is the belief that you can only choose one option, one future, one destiny—that’s a lot of pressure! It’s no wonder someone would feel paralyzed with indecision.
But life doesn’t always revolve around one choice that determines everything you do, especially nowadays. One's path can have many different stages, one life can contain multiple lives or figs. Of course, you might worry that by trying to do everything, you could get lost, and end up doing nothing.
And that’s a fair concern because don’t get me wrong—no matter what you do, you make sacrifices. That is the power of making a choice: you’re willing to give something up in order to pursue something you want. And getting good at whatever it is you choose to do takes time and consistent effort.
But the fact of the matter is people do change their careers. Sometimes people marry and then remarry, and not everyone wants to have a family, or they start a family at a later age.
So, what are your figs? What futures look good to you? What interests you? What are you good at? Those figs aren’t going to spoil any time soon, your life choices are more of a journey than a destination, which means that just because you choose one option doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll lose all the other ones—you’ll just lose some of them. But for now, let go of the extremes: just because you can’t have it all doesn’t mean you have to choose just one.
Look at that fig tree again, and, instead of thinking, “which one do I have to eat for the rest of my life,” think, “which one shall I start with at this stage in my life?”
And while you’re at it, give Plath’s “The Bell Jar” a try to learn how one of America’s greatest poets struggled with and overcame many of the same issues we all deal with today.