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OCD, or obsessive compulsive disorder, is an illness characterized by uncontrollable repetitive behaviors or thoughts. In Fun Home,  Alison reminisces on how her OCD episode affected her as a ten-year-old. Her uncontrollable fear of lying in her diary causes her to doubt her own senses and thoughts, and to rectify this, she writes "I think" before every sentence. Eventually, "I think" becomes too long of a word for Alison to write, resulting in her colloquializing "I think" as an upside down Aries symbol. T he later diary entries become almost unsettling because of how much they are consumed in doubt.  On the weekend where she sees the body of a boy her age at the funeral home, the "I think" symbol takes over the entire page.  I found it particularly poignant that her compulsions are at their worst after seeing such a stark image of death. The corpse caused her such uncertainty and nervousness that she hit the peak of her obsessiveness with being...

"The Belljar" is distinctly divided into two sections: Before Esther leaves New York, and afterwards. Before she leaves New York, the story is relatively tame in comparison to when she returns to the suburbs and her life completely crumbles. However, in the first half of the book, there are foreshadowing moments that serve as landmarks of what's to come.  The biggest example of foreshadowing can be found through the electrocution of the Rosenbergs. The very first line of the book reads "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs" (Plath 1). The idea of electrocution hangs over the whole story, and Esther's time in New York. She narrates how uneasy the concept makes her,  "The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick" (Plath 1). To the reader, it makes sense to be put off by a public execution, but Esther's opinion of the Rosenbergs is shut down by others. At a notable time much later in the book, right before Est...

I have to confess something to you.  Maybe 6 or 7 chapters into Catcher in the Rye , I came under the impression of the Holden Horse Hypothesis. I'm sure many theories have been created during class readings of the book, maybe even about horses, but I'm not sure if anybody jumped to the theory of equestrian lycanthropy as fast as I did.  First, some backstory. Horses in relation to Holden were introduced to me the second I saw the book, with a deranged-looking pony soaked in red appearing to prance over a city. I know now that this is obviously a carousel ride drawn in a slightly darker art style, but I was under the impression the pony was getting stabbed with some sort of javelin. That intrigued me. Why a horse on the cover of a book that has barely anything to do with horses? Why was it so scary-looking? Why was there a pole going through it?  Then within the 1st page there are direct references to a horse, while Holden is talking about the phony advertising Pencey Pre...