There is a time where one’s childhood must be left behind as their journey to adulthood begins. This tough transition could be described as simple. It could also be recognized as complicated, like having two feet in different buckets and deciding which one to step move. The rusty wooden pail would be one’s childhood holding them back, and the new metal bucket would be their future bringing them to the mature world. This was the difficult transition that Esther Greenwood from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger faced while going into adolescence. Unfortunately, both characters had a negative experience which includes poor sexual relationships, isolation, and depression.
The poor sexual…show more content… In the book The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood needed attention from people around her. To resolve her temptation, she went on blind dates with men who had astonishing names. Esther said, “I collected men with interesting names. I already knew a Socrates.” (Plath, 48) Esther desired to go to prom with Buddy Willard, whom she had a crush on for many years. When Buddy Willard, her previous boyfriend, came to tell her that he was going to another prom with another girl, Esther’s mood changed drastically. Instead of understanding, she requested him to leave and told him that she was going for a date that night. By the end of the whole fuss, she opened a letter from him that turned out to be an invitation to Yale’s prom. In addition to her need of men and attention, she also wanted to lose her virginity. There were many situations in the book where she ignored the image of a stereotypical 1950s’ woman and followed her own concepts. In the 1950s’, men had dominance over women, she would be raped
