Analysis Of The Book ' The Memoir '

For this rhetorical analysis, I have chosen to discuss Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted. The novel is based on Susanna Kaysen’s experience of being hospitalized in a mental hospital after her attempted suicide in which she overdosed on a bottle of aspirin which she washed down with a bottle of vodka at the age of 17. What we see in Girl, Interrupted is Kaysen’s strident view on the reality of mental illness and how it affected her and those she shared a ward with. “In a strange way we were free. We’d reached the end of the line.

5. According to Goffman, patients commonly create narratives about themselves in order to make more desirable self-presentations of themselves to others. In other words, patients will commonly make up past achievements about themselves in order to create a better self-image. In the movie, Georgina, who was Susanna’s roommate, was a pathological liar. Throughout the film, she continuously told lies in order to better her self-presentation. For instance, she threatens another patient when she says “My dad is the head of the CIA and he could have you dead in minutes”. She used this lie to portray herself as having powerful and influential family members and to depict herself in a better way to the other patients. Furthermore, Goffman writes, “One typically finds that he constructs an image of his life course – past, present, and future – which selects, abstracts, and distorts in such a way as to provide him with a view of himself which he can usefully expound in current situations” (Goffman 1961:498). This is seen through another character in the film, Polly. Polly is a disfigured patient checked into the mental hospital because of her schizophrenia and depression. She has various burns on her face and body and tells the other patients she was part of a bad fire. This causes the other patients to feel bad for her and show her sympathy. However, in reality Polly was not trapped in a fire, but rather she set herself on fire. If she told the other patients this, they would view

William Zinsser is the person that wrote “How To Write A Memoir ”. William Zinsser gave us some advice to write a memoir. These specific advices are “Be Yourself”,” Speak Freely”, and “Think Small”. In Bad Boy, Walter Dean Myer memoir uses Zinsser advice but not in a exact way Zinsser wrote his memoir. Zinsser give us suggestions such as “Be Yourself” , ”It Your Story”, and “Think Small”.

In her first journal entry Kaysen tells how the decision for her to go to McLean Hospital was based on a twenty minute conversation with a psychiatrist. Kaysen had been picking at her acne and been acting out in ways which would not be considered unusual for teens today, but at the time it was a sufficient excuse for commitment to an institution. In an interview, Kaysen further develops the idea that her illness was influenced by outside factors saying, “ [Her] retrospective account of her confinement at McLean Hospital makes a cultural intervention that challenges the notion that mental illness is rooted solely in the individual.” (Kaysan, 18). Being surrounded by girls with serious illnesses forced Kaysen to assume the role of a girl with a real mental illness. Society forced her to find something wrong with herself in an attempt to fit in. Kaysen questions what mental illness truly is. She asks,“Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?” (Kaysen 41). Because Kaysen was labeled as being mentally ill although she was not, it became hard for her to tell what truly pronounced someone as mentally ill. Was everyone slightly crazy or were just some better at hiding it then others? Living in such an uptight society, people had no choice but to put on an act of perfection. When someone began to “drop the

After finishing this memoir, there is no denying that the main character, Augusten Burroughs, has a problem. From a very young age his alcoholic tendencies (coupled with other drug use) have caused hardships for both himself and those around him. As he aged, so his alcoholism increased. In Dry: A memoir we get to see Augusten’s challenging journey from a life revolving around alcohol to sobriety. As previously mentioned, it is undeniable that Augusten did have a problem. But, does this automatically mean he is clinically diagnosable with an alcohol related disorder? Unfortunately, in this case, the answer is yes. Augusten Burroughs is not only diagnosable for clinical substance dependence, but could be considered the poster child of the

"'Time Turned Solid, Like a Wall': Four Mental Hospital Memoirs." Clio Medica, vol. 92, no. 1,

Tuesday October 7th 2014 Shaneik Smith Professor Williams Writ 101 Wangari Bibliography Maathai, Wangari. Unbowed: A Memoir. New York, Random House, 2006. Print.

     The author’s has 2 main points; one point is about her two-year stay McLean hospital. The second main point talks about how she handles and gets treated for being depressive and suicidal.

A comparative literary study of the effect of mental illness on the central characters is the semi-autobiographical novels The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. Comparing two women trying to deal with mental illness and are trying to cope with the mental pressures they put on themselves and by other people. Although the differences between these two novels are The Bell Jar shows Esther’s life before she descends into mental illness whereas Susanna’s story is about her time in a mental institution and experiencing other patients who are in similar situations.

Kay Redfield Jamison, an American clinical psychiatrist, and now writer, who published An Unquiet Mind, had published over 100 academic articles, and chosen by Time magazine as “The Hero of Medicine” (O’Byrne, 1997). She was and still is an incredibly successful women. Jamison has not always felt that to be true. Jamison, who has been diagnosed with manic depressive disorder since she was in high school, but had not really experienced any severe episodes of either mania or depression. Her father, Marshall, also had manic depressive disorder, but he was not treated. His manic episodes lead to extreme spending, and long trips, to this day Kay does not know where to. His illness made for a tough marriage, and interesting family life. While his illness had effected everyone in the family, it was not to be spoken of (Jamison, 1995).

After numerous essays about light topics she moves on to a serious topic. After talking about leaving notes for herself at night, she explains how her experience with mental illness by saying, “Mentally ill. It’s a phrase that once scared me, but now I wear it like an old jacket, comfortable but ugly. It keeps me warm when people look at me as if I’ve lost my mind… I know that when my anxiety attacks hit, my body isn’t actually going to kill me, in spite of how it feels.

What is it like to live with a mental illness? That is the central question posed by both Lee Smith and Charlotte Perkins. Some of us experience living with a mental illness first hand, others of us live surrounded by it, and then there are those who simply learn about the variety of types. Through an author's writing, literature is one of the mediums where we are sometimes given insight into mental illness. In Lee Smith's Dimestore, and Charlotte Perkins The Yellow Wallpaper we can see how mental illness affected these women’s lives, and compare and contrast the views society has had on mental illness during these time periods.

Memoir is a style of life writing with a variety of subgenres intended to impact the world and spread awareness on multiple issues. In “Memoir” by G. Thomas Couser, an autopathography is defined as a subgenre “…centered on medical conditions and impairments once considered stigmatic” (Couser 43). Essentially, an autopathography tells a story of a life concerning a medical condition and seeks to spread awareness on said condition. “Girl, Interrupted” by Susanna Kaysen is a memoir telling the story of a young girl taken to a psychiatric hospital in the late 60s. The memoir was published in 1993 and continues to have an impact due to its descriptions of mental illness. By analyzing the memoirist’s descriptions of her time spent hospitalized

What I found interesting about this personal narrative was the fact that it was a collection of history, diaries, letters--a memoir. It felt as though it was a history textbook meshed with a personal diary; the Indigenous people’s hidden memoir. Furthermore, it was interesting when she included and discussed about the fourth grade mission project. The fourth grade mission project is probably the only piece of history that children are exposed to about the California Indians, and it is not even the true and full history. This goes to show that at a young age-- racism/colonialism is institutionalized. Moreover, this memoir exposes the harsh realities of colonialism through discussions of exploitation, physical abuse and sexual violence. She demonstrates

Wylie’s belief that control, implicitly maintained by land forces (i.e., the man on the ground with a gun), decides the outcome of conflict is mistaken. His implied importance of supporting land forces matches the relationship Corbett and Slessor emphasized for naval and air forces; however, the control Wylie envisions is really only a means, not an end in itself. Although control may be maintained over a specific span of time or territory, political settlements decided the final outcome. Therefore, much like Corbett accused battleship-focused naval theorist and Slessor accused strategic bombing advocates, Wylie confused means and end. He implicitly assumes control results in victory, which recent wars have proven to be incorrect. However,