Esther and Holden
As we neared the end of The Bell Jar , I noticed something: the farther we got into Esther's breakdown, the more she started resembling Holden from The Catcher in the Rye . She even got to the point where she started being hypocritical in the way that Holden is. For example, on page 188: "'What the hell is she doing here?' I wondered. 'There's nothing the matter with her.'" The whole point of the novel is to show that her illness is invisible, that nobody else can see it. However, when someone else comes in, she immediately assumes that there's nothing wrong with her. She also becomes more and more separated and skeptical of society. Just in general, she removes herself from society and criticizes it (at one point I even thought she might start talking about phonies). Even though she does this because of her depression, the similarity is definitely there.