Preview

Girl Interrupted By Susanna Kaysen: An Analysis

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
209 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Girl Interrupted By Susanna Kaysen: An Analysis
Susanna Kaysen’s, Girl, Interrupted is a literature piece that discusses the topic of mental illness, specifically borderline personality disorder. The novel shows a perception of the issues surrounding mental illness and how individuals within society are repressed due to their health conditions. Society’s negativity towards mental illness is showcased through Susanna’s personal experience when she finds a job or when she goes out on a walk with nurses from the hospital. Individuals within her community would use terms like ‘crazy’ and ‘insane’ to describe mental illness. Ultimately, Girl, Interrupted reflects the misconceptions of mental illness and the unjust treatment that came along in the hospital for Susanna. This novel acknowledges

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    A piece of the history of mental illness that stood out to me in this material was The Case of Mrs. Packard and Legal Commitment. Back in 1860 Elizabeth Packard was put into an institution by her husband because at the time it was legal for a husband to hospitalize their wives and stayed there for three years. When she returned home her husband locked her up and planned to send her back to the asylum. She was able to get out and went on to spend her life campaigning to protect women's rights. I selected this piece of history because I didn’t realize how much power men had over women back then and how just their word could lock up a woman. It was so shocking I had to read it a second time to make sure I read it right. This definitely makes me…

    • 187 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption follows the story of Louie Zamperini, a rebellious child who grew up to become one of the fastest runners of the 1930s. He competed as an Olympic track runner in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The future was looking bright for Zamperini before World War II began, which resulted in the Olympics being cancelled and Louie being drafted into the Army Air Forces as a bombardier. Midway through 1943, his B-24 crash landed in the Pacific Ocean. For weeks, Louie and two other men drifted westward across a seemingly endless ocean, accompanied by a pack of sharks and surviving on scraps of bird and fish meat and the occasional rainfall. Eventually, he arrived in Japanese…

    • 1142 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Louie is a courageous man who survived the beatings of the war. He was a great runner who changed his life by enlisting in the war. He was stranded with his two bombardier mates on a raft until they were found by the Japanese and dehumanized. After the war has ended he lived a life of alcoholism until he found forgiveness. In the book Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand uses the life experiences of Louie Zamperini to show the traits of being courageous and determined.…

    • 662 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The longest serving first lady of the United states Eleanor Roosevelt had once said, “People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.” In Laura Hillenbrand’s nonfiction book Unbroken, the exceedingly clever Louis Zamperini embodied Roosevelt’s words when he survived World War II employing his own idea’s of his to stay alive and help his remaining crew return home.…

    • 1103 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is common for our society to prejudge the worth or value of something or someone by their outward appearance alone. In the essay entitled “Highway of Lost Girls” Vanessa Veselka returns back to the scene of her fugitive youth searching for clues, particularly that horrifying experience one night on I-95 when she hitched a ride from a stranger. Her essay also successfully exposes the struggle of invisible girls that were victimized and lost their lives to the hands of the serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades. Veselka’s use of suspense, pace and setting makes her essay very compelling.…

    • 571 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “The C Word In The Hallway” the author, Anna Quindlen, argues that more attention needs to be brought upon those who are mentally ill. Quidlen is a writer for a magazine called “Newsweek” who wrote this article for those who are concerned about the health of the mentally ill. This article was written around the time of the Columbine High School massacre, two senior boys killed fifteen people including themselves.…

    • 151 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Girl Interrupted Analysis

    • 1132 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Soaked, little, and naked is how the viewer finds Susanna in the middle of Girl, Interrupted. Or rather, soaked, little, naked, and hysterical. A state James Mangold utilizes to further illustrate his message. The film serves as a vehicle for Mangold to discuss madness and the society it exists within. Valerie, the asylum’s registered nurse, throws Susanna, the film’s suicidal protagonist, into a tub filled with water in order to snap Susanna out of her depressed state. Susanna lashes out at Valerie with every hurtful vulgarity she has within her. Despite this, Valerie remains calm and collected. In this interaction between Susanna and Valerie, madness is portrayed in its most basic form; it is an ongoing battle between the individual and the environment surrounding it. The individual is a victim of his environment, overwhelmed into regurgitating the detritus surrounding him that are readily filtered and suppressed by those deemed sane by society.…

    • 1132 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the article "The C Word in the Hallways", Anna Quindlen claims that teenage killings can be prevented by drawing attention to mental health. Quindlen supports her claim by giving examples of individual cases in great detail, and stating information relating to the issue of mental health. The author's purpose is to persuade readers so that they should treat mental illness instead of dismissing it as a "character flaw". She speaks in a serious but derisive tone to address parents, schools and healthcare providers.…

    • 567 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cosi

    • 838 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Louis Nowra’s screenplay ‘Cosi’ explores the attitudes to and perception of the mentally ill in 1971. During this period Australia is at war and undergoing social reform. The perception of mental patients in the 70s can be seen as unethical and inhumane, with society grouping them with animals and locking them away in asylums with barbaric conditions. The 70s saw mental illness being neglected and kept in the dark and with movies that depict ‘mad’ people as animals; a negative connotation is placed upon these people. Nowra attempts to shed light on the issue and change our attitude by drawing sympathy for them through his play ‘Cosi’.…

    • 838 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The movie that I, choose to watch and was related to Psychology was “Girl, Interrupted” directed by. James Mangold. The movie is an ardent film that captures the lives of a group of women in a mental institution. To be noted, this was a book before it became a movie. It was a book based off of the main character and author, Susanna Kaysen, who details her life after checking herself into an institution after attempting suicide. The movie is about Suzanna and the relationships she makes while living in the institution.…

    • 469 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Girl Interrupted

    • 1325 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The movie Girl interrupted is an interesting movie that delves into the psychology of multiple young girls in an in-house psychiatric facility. The two main characters in the movie are Susanna, played by Wynona Rider, and Lisa, played by Angelina Jolie. The movie is about the lives of the different girls who are in the in-patient facility and their particular disorders. The movie shows the patients going to where the files on each of them are kept and finding out what the psychiatrists had been writing about them, including their particular diagnoses. Susanna is the main character of the movie and is quite the afflicted individual. Susanna is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder by the psychiatrists at the facility and falls into deep denial about her diagnosis. She is a young and troubled girl who seems to fit the diagnoses of the psychiatrists extremely well. Another key character is the movie is Lisa who is a controlling individual who torments some of the other patients at times. Lisa is diagnosed as a sociopath, which is a form of anti-social personality disorder, by the psychiatrists and also seems to fit the diagnosis extremely well. There are also two extremely interesting minor characters in this movie that deserve mention. These two characters are the disfigured Polly, who had poured gasoline on her face and ignited it as a child, and the extremely depressive Daisy, who seems to have some severe depression and a possible eating disorder. Although these two characters were never formally diagnosed in the movie, their particular actions and issues speak worlds to the world of abnormal psychology and I ended up feeling the worst for in the movie. Susanna, Lisa, Polly, and Daisy all have very interesting but different problems and ties to abnormal psychology and the different disorders that can afflict certain individuals.…

    • 1325 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The movie Girl Interrupted is a memoir about Susanna Kaysen's battle with mental illness. It is set in the sixties and seventies, in a medium security psychiatric ward. After Susanna attempts suicide, her parents bring her to speak with a psychotherapist who suggests and end up convincing her to commit herself to be institutionalized and eventually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. During the course of the film, which seems to take place within well over a year, she undergoes treatment in the forms of therapy, analysis and pharmaceutical drugs. During her stay at the psych ward she meets and builds relationships with the other females who are undergoing treatment for other forms of mental illness. I believe that the individual that I would be intervening with would be Susanna in this case. Based on the fact that she has been institutionalized I would be interacting or intervening hopefully within the first few weeks of her stay in the hospital so as to start building a relationship with the client as soon as possible. Gathering information/Assessment…

    • 2200 Words
    • 63 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The film titled Girl, Interrupted tells a story about a young woman, named Susanna, who was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, due to, her erratic behaviour and attempting suicide by consuming an entire bottle of pills. Susanna’s parents, especially, find her actions to be a burden and problematic and collectively make a life changing decision for their “troubled” daughter. After consulting a psychiatrist, Susanna is sent to a psychiatric hospital to treat her new diagnosed mental illness. The movie provides several depictions concerning mental health and negatively paints a picture of individuals living with mental illness. Thus, making it difficult to deconstruct such stigma that continues to persist within society. The film promotes stigma related to people…

    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cosi

    • 830 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Mental illnesses were seen by society as a negative form of difference and so mental illness patients have continuously been stereotyped and marginalised by society throughout there lives. The mistreatment of mental illness patients has been displayed throughout the play Cosi. The mental characters from the play create a theme of madness through there different personalities and quirks. The theme; mental illness and madness are developed for the audience by Louis Nowra’s choice of stage directions, dialogue, conflicts and symbolism.…

    • 830 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are several mental disorders depicted in Girl, Interrupted. Susanna has borderline personality disorder. This was portrayed very well, considering the clinical description of the disorder. She feels that time can go backward and forward, she frequently has flashbacks, is generally pessimistic, tends toward the company of men,…

    • 888 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays