Cody Phillippi
Dr. Robert Davis
English 180: Literature and Madness
28 September 2015
It is almost every young athlete’s dream to play at the division one level in his or
her sport. All the free gear and playing in front of thousands of people was what we
would imagine doing in our back yards or in our rooms before bed. I got the opportunity
to be one of these selected few. I signed with Cleveland State University and went up
there for summer school. It ended up being terrible and I hated every second of it so I
decided to come here, to Wittenberg. The fact was I was so blinded by being a division
one athlete nothing else mattered. I was all about the appearance and how people would
talk about me. I was so immature with my decision-making. After all of this went down I
didn’t want to play basketball anymore. My dreams had been crushed. Then I came to my
senses and once again decided to play. Looking back on it I can see that the division one
stuff doesn’t matter at all. It’s about playing somewhere you love with people you love
and getting a great education. So, have I changed since I don’t see division one basketball
the same? No, I have grown from an immature, appearance driven kid into someone who
sees the world different now. This is what I see in Sylvia Plath’s book The Bell Jar from
Esther Greenwood. I do not think that Esther has “changed” because as much as you do
become different from the person you once were, you still have that same old person right
in the back of your mind that can come back out at any time . Esther still has “the bell jar,
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with its stifling distortions” (241) sitting right above her, waiting to drop. What Esther
has done is grown, through maturity and accepting who and what she is: “I am, I am, I
am” (243). Esther is not perfect by any means but she finally accepts herself and starts to
see the world differently. She is starting to become stronger and more confident. She is
starting to have hope.
Esther Greenwood is this incredibly smart girl living the “perfect” life, as people
would say. She is seen in the beginning as someone who has at all but internally she is
lost. Not able to express the real Esther because that is not what a typical woman is
supposed to do at this time. Esther had this feeling of not being good enough and not
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