Girl Interrupted Hero's Journey

Due to her psychosis, many critics believe that Susanna Kaysen needs to be enrolled in a mental institution in order to recover. Coerced to enroll, she does so and then feels trapped in this new environment. Susanna’s first step of the hero’s journey actually takes place when she was still living in her parents’ house in an uptown part of Massachusetts; this was her ordinary life. Despite the irony, in this ordinary world she struggles with depression, suicidal thoughts and what we later learn is a personality disorder. In her memoir, Susanna doesn’t write much about her life before McLean but instead she focuses on her suicidal thought process: “Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the [suicide] debate. Make a stupid remark—why not kill myself...Even the good got in there. I liked that

This choice creates irony because while she is describing her ordinary life, the audience would argue otherwise because a life like this is not virtually normal or “ordinary.” James Mangold, director of the film, Girl, Interrupted, does a better job displaying Susanna’s familiar life. He portrays Susanna as timid and awkward during a family gathering, which in my perspective, seems pretty accurate.
The next most pivotal stage in Susanna Kaysen’s hero’s journey is the call to adventure. This is when she first admits herself into McLean mental hospital. This introduction to a new world and and environment is a transition that is not easy for Susanna. Ultimately, the choice was hers to enroll to the mental hospital, but she was heavily encouraged by her psychologist to go. “‘I’ve got a bed for you,’ he said. “It’ll be a rest. Just for a couple weeks, okay?’” (Kaysen 8). Susanna agrees to go at the end of the week, on Friday, but he immediately he snaps back with “No. You go now,” (8). The