Analysis Of ' Schizophrenic Narrative ' By Lee R. Edwards Essay

When most people hear the word psychopath their mind forms a picture of a wild-eyed, rambling, lunatic who is often restrained in a straitjacket. The media has helped this belief along the way with slasher horror films and grisly CSI episodes depict these strange humans. However, the average psychopath is much harder to spot than most people believe. In fact, most of them are extremely difficult to distinguish from ordinary humans. They outwardly appear normal and many do not find it difficult to blend into common society. They can interact with others, hold successful jobs, and effectively keep themselves out of trouble. Most are not the sadistic killers many people think they are. Psychopaths are people born with problems (Bartol 105) or

Throughout A Good and Happy Child, the main battle is whether George, the main character, is schizophrenic or possessed by a demon. Many different arguments come up for both sides of this battle as the story goes on. Justin Evans, the author, also uses various literary techniques to display the the psychological versus the spiritual debate.

Edgar Allan Poe was an extraordinary author whose horror and mystery stories leave an impression on readers even today. In some of Poe’s works, the narrator’s thoughts and actions make the reader question the narrator’s sanity. Two good examples are Poe’s poem “The Raven” and his short story “The Black Cat”; there is plenty of evidence to support that both of the narrators are not completely sane. In Poe’s “The Raven” and “The Black Cat,” both narrators exhibit symptoms of mental illness, including hallucinations, illogical thinking, mood swings, and substance abuse.

In Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey shows the reader the idea of sanity versus insanity. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is about the struggle between chaos and order. There is no freedom without a little chaos, yet to maintain the order there must be oppression. McMurphy upsets the routine of the ward by asking for schedule changes and aspiring resistance during therapy sessions. He teaches his fellow inmates to have fun, and encourages them to embrace their human desires. He does this by convincing them that not only are they sane, but they are man (real people), in contrast nurse Ratched as an authoritarian. He soon discovers due to this that he is not only trapped behind physical walls but mental ones as well. Many patients

The book “The Soloist” is about L.A. Times writer Steve Lopez discovering a musically gifted homeless man named Nathaniel Ayers. Desperately needing to catch a deadline Mr. Lopez considers writing a story about Nathaniel. While researching Mr. Lopez begins to discover interesting things about the talented musician. Nathanial Ayers was accepted to The Julliard’s School of music, the most prestige school for music in North America. After one year at Julliard Nathanial dropped out, it turns out that Nathanial had a case of Paranoid Schizophrenia that forced him into a spiral of madness, which soon caused him to become homeless and lose a chance at becoming one of the greatest musicians. Before reading this book I did have some knowledge about

For the past fifty years treatment of schizophrenia has been marked by its basis on the dopamine hypothesis for schizophrenia. However, this model for the disease and its subsequent treatment have left many patients without relief or help in dealing with this disease which has lead to a search for a better model. The dopamine model lacks the recognition of a whole range of symptoms associated with the disease and therefore can not be an accurate basis for treatment. More recently, there has been a shift to the glutamate hypothesis which has been shown to more accurately characterize the wide range of symptoms experienced by patients living with this disorder as well as the possibility in improvements for drug treatments.

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” expresses the deterioration of the human mind as it travels through the spiral of insanity. According to Bloom, “’The Tell-Tale Heart’ is a breathless, frightening monologue of the disintegration of consciousness and conscience under the onslaught of obsession.” The short story’s unnamed narrator speaks to the reader as if the he/she were within his unstable mind (Sova). The guilty narrator finds the utmost importance of justifying to the reader that he truly is sane. And it is within this importance that the reader sees the narrator as he truly is.

Unreliable narrators are incorporated into both classic and modern literature contains narrators that are unreliable, many of which are acclaimed over the world. Perhaps it is because they blatantly lie or mask events from the reader. They might be unable to distinguish between reality and imagination. Or, they are stricken with insanity. Edgar Allen Poe’s character Montresor is a prime example of an unreliable narrator. As is J. D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in Rye. However, it can be difficult to distinguish between what is a reliable narrator, and what is not.

Many would argue that Kurt Vonnegut severed the “Billy Pilgrim” from within himself as a therapeutic process to save his own sanity. (Broer 95) Billy Pilgrim resembles Vonnegut through his experiences at war, as a prisoner and surviving the bombing of Dresden. Both men also survived a plane crash and have an detachment to their emotions. (Klinkowitz, Vonnegut in Fact, 5) Vonnegut used the creation of his character to cope and treat himself.

When watching, “Alice in Wonderland” as a child of course I didn’t know what Schizophrenia was, therefore I didn’t recognize or look for this in the character of Alice. After doing research and re-watching the film, it became clearer to me that Alice does in fact show symptoms of Schizophrenia.

Unreliable narrators are, in fact, reliable if they use these modes of persuasion because it demonstrates the narrators being fearless when it comes to revealing themselves-- of course in an artistic expression, an impression. If this is accurate, are Eggers’ motives ethical? Self-validation with tones of pity? It wouldn't be fair, however, to leave it at that. Clearly, his memoir has many sides in which I plan to research.

Authorial intrusion, which is uncommon in most works of contemporary fiction, is arguably the most important literary device Poe uses to construct the narrator’s manic voice. Though the entire story is written as a confessional, the unnamed chronicler frequently interrupts his recount to attempt to convince the reader that he actually isn’t insane. After explaining his egregious crime along with the motivation; the narrator proceeds to state  “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me” (92). These erratic sentences interrupt the flow of the writing but are extremely important in developing the narrator's voice as it further  Following the quote he explains the methodical lengths he went through; lengths that only an absolute psychopath would find rational, and attempts to justify them as his own cunning intellect rather than an insatiable desire to kill. He reiterates a similar variation of this sentence multiple times throughout his recounting of the events, “If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer” (95) and “have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?” (94), which again helps to reinforce this idea that the narrator is truly unaware of his own madness.

Lu Xun’s story “Diary of a Madman” serves to demonstrate his discontent with traditional Chinese cultural, not only by the fact that it clearly addresses the incidence of cannibalism that is believed to have occurred but also symbolizes the oppressive nature of Confucian principles.Lu Xun’s madman has the ability to recognize the oppressive elements of Chinese Confucian culture serves to mock established but out-dated traditional scholarship and symbolizes the greater wisdom of cultural reform, especially as it is advanced by modern intellectuals of the period.

The personality of the narrator is foregrounded and exists as a character engaged in an open dialogue with the reader. The narrator is thoroughly unreliable in his ability to serve as the sole source of information and insight, a figure possessing absolute control of the text. The authority of the narrator is paradoxically undermined and  underscored by admission of his own inadequacies in shaping the text.

A sense of dramatic irony is thought to be used throughout the reading. However, the