While reading the book “The Bell Jar” I was starting to grow a bit of love for Esther. She was an interesting character, someone whom I couldn’t quite figure out, she was very mysterious to me. I believe this is one of the main reasons why I was very interested in reading this book. However, in chapter fourteen my feelings toward her takes a turn as she calls a boy with color a “negro.” Now as we all now Esther is smart and she is also a writer, so for her to discriminate with such powerful language makes me rethink her whole personality/characteristic. I now believe she is very close minded and is afraid to have a mind of her own, in other words she likes to fit in and deep down her identity makes her uncomfortable and that is the reason why she is crazy and sits in the psychotic home today.

In this book their lye’s a HUGE issue of race that is not brought to the attention of readers, until the end. The issue is not discussed throughout the book and however the narrator dismisses it with a simple paragraph. Esther do exhibit awareness of her privileged racial status and decides to act upon it by being disrespectful. As intellectual thinkers we are able to know that if this black male is able to work in the hospital their were no longer division between the Whites and the Blacks. People of color was free of hostage. However, I can tell Esther felt somewhat sorry for the boy as she tried to make no eye contact while he stepped into the room because of his skin color, but then later when she realized he was just a “silly” worker and not someone she should feel pity for she kicks him on the calf of his leg and looks directly in his eye stating, “that’s what you get” (Pdf. Pg. 96) She kicks him because she felt he was “testing” her and I believe if this boy was a white boy she wouldn’t have done that and she would have just held her anger in by lying in bed all day. This right here is pure ignorance because as stated in the beginning of the book Esther is very smart and receives scholarships from schools that wish to have her in it. She is from the low class society which doesn’t even make her inferior so why is it that she condoned to this behavior? Because Esther is aware of her white privilege and wants readers to know.

In the article “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” Lorde states, “As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate…..As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion” This basically gives me an understanding of why Esther reacted to the way she did. Her actions were indeed the way society has taught her to be. And the biggest issue that the human race face is that we choose to either ignore it or act upon it by manipulating instead of trying to reason with it or better understand. Her article has made a strong connection with the book “The Bell Jar.”