Donnie Darko the Paranoid Schizophrenic

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Donnie Darko is a teenager with a history of violence, and getting into trouble. He has issues with his family, and he get into fights easily with his parents, and siblings. One of the issues he has is because he tends to fall asleep in his bed, then wake up elsewhere out of his house, like a golf course, and the top of a mountain. His parents put Donnie into therapy for paranoid schizophrenia. At the beginning of the movie they find out he has stopped taking his medication for this disorder. One of the issues this disorder has on Donnie is that he believes a bunny watches him. It talks to him every chance it gets telling him to do terrible things, and causes Donnie to believe that the world is going to end at a specific time. Donnie leaves one night like he tends to do often in his sleep, because he was fallowing his friend bunny, Frank, who told Donnie to “Fallow him into the future.” He returns home only to find firefighters, and police officers covering his street. He finds out that a piece of aircraft debre had fallen into his room that night, and if he had been home it would have killed him. After this event he talks to his therapist about Frank, telling her how Frank told him the world is coming to an end. After that session, his therapist decides she want to try hypno therapy.
Frank later on asks Donnie if he believes in time travel. After which, Donnie goes to a teacher at his school and asks about time travel. His teacher explains some of it to him, then gives Donnie a book about the theory of time travel. This book was written by an older confused lady in Donnie's neighbor hood, who is always walking to and from her mail box. Donnie speaks to her and she simply tells him that “Every living creature on earth dies alone...

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...rstand because it ends with a wide variety of reasons on how the movie ended like it did. Some people suggest that Donnie doesn’t have the disorder that he has been diagnosed with in the movie. Many say he is really having a dream, being shown the future, and some even think he is experiencing a looping tangent universe. Viewers believe that the parents made him see a psychiatrist to help them feel better about how their child was acting, so they had something else to blame, other then their parenting. I chose this movie because he had the symptoms and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and has to see a psychiatrist for it. I also chose this movie not only for the disorder, but because it easily twists the viewers mind as the movie progresses on.

Works Cited

Mayo Clinic Staff. "Paranoid schizophrenia." Definition. N.p., 16 Dec. 2010. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.

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