Bridging Two Worlds in Girl Interrupted
Susanna Kaysen's memoir, Girl Interrupted describes Kaysen's struggle to transcend across the boundary that separates her from two parallel universes: the worlds of sanity and insanity, security and vulnerability. In this memoir, Kaysen details her existence as a psychiatric patient diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder in a mental institution where time seems circular alongside a parallel universe where time is normally linear. The hospital itself becomes a paradoxical representation of both strict confinement and ultimate personal freedom. Through Kaysen's short, blunt phrase-like sentences, she forcefully impresses the shocking conditions she endured on the memory of her readers. Writing in a subtle, almost Hemingway-stark style, she merely suggests the actual reality of her situation in her objective observations of her experiences, leaving her readers in a disturbing position of being suspended between the world that Kaysen paints and the factual reality.
And it is easy to slip into a parallel universe
There are so many of them: worlds of the
insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying,
perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds
exist alongside this world and resemble it, but
are not in it... (Kaysen, 5)
Through the disclosure of Kaysen's case record files, the readers learn that Kaysen was born on November 11, 1948 to Carl and Annette Kaysen. Kaysen grew up in an intellectual, ambitious, Jewish family prominent in the academic world; her father Carl was the director for advanced studies at Princeton University. However, on April 27, 1967 at age 18, Kaysen was admitted voluntarily to the McLean Hospital because of...
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...ceive our own experiences clearly nor understand ourselves and each other completely anyway. She implies that we all live suspended between a reality we live and a reality we create in our minds like the young girl in the Vermeer painting trapped in a world of muted light,unable to perceive everything lucidly.
The girl at her music sits in another
sort of light, the fitful, overcast light
of life, by which we see ourselves
and others only imperfectly, and
seldom...(Kaysen, 168)
Works Cited
Cheever, Susan. "A Designated Crazy." The New York Times 20 June, 1993.
Johnson, Alex, "A Conversation with Susanna Kaysen," Agni, 1994, p105
Johnson, Alex, "A Conversation with Susanna Kaysen," Agni, 1994, p105.
Sharkey, Nancy. "Two Years in the Bin". The New York Times 20, June, 1993.
Hampl, Patricia. "Memory and Imagination".
She alludes to the idea that as people we must look deeper into our lives and see were we may have been given unearned privilege whether is be from race, gender, or sexuality.
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Allison has had a bitter past full of moments which have scarred her personality. She uses these and writes about the world that few are willing to admit exists. Many find refuge behind their gregarious nature and take comfort in religion or other bodies. However, that does not change the facts of what the world is and how it got there. Allison exposes her audience to these facts, and in the process, she shares her own view.
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In conclusion, Girl Interrupted displayed many accurate traits of the psychiatric disorders depicted. Susanna Kaysen’s memoirs provided a strong backbone for a film to show outsiders what life was like inside a psychiatric facility in the 1960’s.