Are Titles Important?

I never really pay attention to titles. Are they really important? To me, they are just a way to identify one book from another in a crowded library. Most of the time, the meaning of the title is very clear: a phrase repeated in the book, a concept which stands out, the name of a character or place in the story, etc. However, sometimes I can’t place the title and these are the cases where I ask myself why the author chose those few words to represent their story. The Bell Jar by Silvia Plath is one of these examples. I have read a good portion of the book by now and I have not come upon any clue as to why the semi biographical book has this name. To be honest, I don’t even know what a bell jar is. Evidently, it is hard to imagine the purpose of a book when you don’t know what the object being referred to in the title is, so I went to a trustworthy source to find more about the subject: Google. I will allow myself to go on a tangent here and add that I have always found interesting how new developments become a crucial part of our life, and our language. The term “Googled ____” is used on a daily basis, we do things thinking on how we can reflect them on Facebook, colloquial chat terms such as lol and XD are now used verbally. Now back on track, what I found about a bell jar was that a bell jar is “A cylindrical glass vessel with a rounded top and an open base, used to protect and display fragile objects or to establish a vacuum or a controlled atmosphere in scientific experiments.” As I read the definition I got some ideas as to why the book could have such a title, based on the object. What it might mean, and I think it does, is that the main character is very fragile and that she feels what she does is open for everyone to see, but she has a hard time letting people in. It might also have to do with the fact that when things are in a bell jar, people really look at them and study them because it is implied that what is in there is important. I will keep on reading and asses the validity of my guess as I move along, but now, at least, I have a faint idea to the main theme in the book: observation.