Alexis Marques
PSC 168 Extra Credit

In Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, the book starts out in the year of 1967 and introduces an eighteen year old Susanna Kaysen who is in session with a doctor she never seen before; who tells her she has a “pimple and that she has been picking at it.” (pg 7) He then asked her if she has been picking at herself in general and Susanna nods (she agrees to anything that the doctor asks her). The doctor repeats that she has been picking herself and then says “you need a rest.” (pg 7) Before Susanna knows it the doctor makes a call, a taxi comes and he tells the driver to take her to McLean Hospital. Once at McLean, Susanna introduces a girl name Polly who had set herself on fire at one point, and that she was never unhappy, she was kind and comforting and never complained. Susanna describes Polly’s suicide attempt as one having courage and being dangerous at the same time. She compares danger and defeat to when one puts a gun in their mouth and is not able to pull the trigger, which is expressed in this quote:
“But you put it there, you taste it, it’s cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you’ve been planning, when you’ll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put the gun back in the drawer. You’ll have to find another way.”(pg 17)

Susanna then reavles her suicide attempt, which she swallowed fifty aspirins and then went outside and fainted , while Polly was able to go through with her suicide attempt and she used fire to do it. Susanna then talks about a time when Polly one day flipped out and started crying and screaming “My face, my face!” In which nurses had to come into Polly’s room and hush her, while the other girls in the ward wondered what had happened. Susanna introduces another character, Lisa; by describing at time when Lisa tried to run away from McLean Hospital, and it was not her first attempt. Only this time instead of being found the next day, it took the nurses three days to find her and they immediately put her in seclusion. Susanna describes Lisa when she comes out of seclusion as no longer there; she is quiet, and just sits and watches T.V. “with the worst of them.” (pg 21) Lisa’s comatose-state lasted for two months, until in May Lisa came out of her “zombie-state” and played a prank on the nurses: when she wrapped the TV, sprinkler system and furniture in toilet paper. One day James Watson, a Nobel laureate and friend of the Kaysen family, visits Susanna. She is happy to see him and he offers to take her away from the McLean, in his new red, MG sports car, but Susanna rejects the offer, convinced that she should stay the course of her treatment, and then joins Lisa to watch some T.V. The next character that Susanna introduces is Daisy, which she describes her as a seasonal event. She also explains that Daisy has “two passions: laxatives and chicken. Every morning she presented herself at the nursing station and drummed her fingers, impatient for laxatives.” (pg 32) She also reveals that Daisy’s father is in love with her, and so when he would visit her at McLean’s he would want to stay and talk and Lisa believes that Daisy’s father wants to have sex with her, in which Susanna agrees since they both noticed that Daisy is sexy, and that she like to wear short shorts and tank tops and when she “ambled down the hall in the morning to get her laxatives, she swung her butt in insouciant half-circles.”(pg 33) Lisa was also determined to get into Daisy’s room, in which Lisa got six laxatives from the head nurse and bargain with Daisy to be let into her room. Which it worked and Lisa was able to tell Susanna and the others what Daisy’s room looked like. Daisy had a routine; she would peel the skin of the chickens and keep the carcass whole and then line them right next to each other under her bed. Once Daisy left Mc Lean’s in Christmas, earlier May, Susanna, Lisa, Polly and another character (that Kaysen didn’t go into a lot of details with introduction) Georgina gathered around the head nurse who told them that sadly Daisy committed suicide on her birthday in her apartment. Susanna next describes how Mc Lean has strict rules dictate patients’ daily routines. Nurses perform “checks,” periodic visual appraisals of the patient’s activate and whereabouts, according to a schedule that corresponds to the severity of the patient’s illness. The staff confiscates any possessions that might inflict injury; “We ate with plastic. Knives, forks and spoons…” (pg 56), nurses even took away earrings and belts. Field trips outside the hospital walls are rare and require a complex system of patient-to-nurse accompaniment. The next character Susanna introduces, is Lisa Cody, who is a new patient, and who’s arrival threatens the social position of “Lisa”, who torments the new girl until she leaves McLean and becomes a junkie, which when “Lisa” runs away again, she sees Lisa Cody and when she is brought back to McLean’s she tells Susanna, Polly and Georgina “I saw Lisa Cody, and she’s a real junkie now.” (pg 62) After Lisa tells Susanna about Lisa Cody, she then considers the consultation at the beginning of the book, which resulted in her hospitalization. Since analysis of hospital records is inconclusive, and she begins to have doubts about the accuracy of her memory which leads into a discussion of the nature of mental illness. Susanna introduces Valerie, who is the young head nurse, and wins the girls’ respect with her nonsense approach to the job and a willingness to stand up to the doctors. She then introduces Dr. Wick, an older psychiatrist, who has trouble relating to the young girls and becomes uncomfortable when the topic of sex comes up. Another doctor the Susanna briefly describes is Mrs. Mc Weeney who the girls detest due to her strictness. Susanna goes on to describe the year of 1968 as an exciting and frightening, as the girls watch its tumultuous events unfold on television. While watching what is happening “outside of their world in the hospital” they come to realize they are sitting on the sidelines of these events and their own lives. The next character that enters into McLean is Torrey, who is a methamphetamine addict from Mexico. Torrey’s parents are embarrassed by their daughter, and when they come to visit her, Lisa tries to help Torrey escape but Valerie foils the plan by giving her Thorazine. In light of this event, the girls then fall into a depression, which Susanna experiences a feeling of depersonalization which then leads to an attempt to tear open her hand with her teeth or fingers to make sure she has bones beneath the skin, which Georgina becomes alarm at Susanna’s sudden change in persona and runs to get Valerie who gives Susanna Thorazine. Susanna then describes when she got her wisdom teeth out, because they became infected and Valerie took her to a dentist in Boston. Upon coming out of the anesthesia, Susanna becomes hysterically and she is worried that she has “lost” time, which when she asks how long did it take to pull out her wisdom teeth neither the dentist or Valerie would tell her and she begins to cry. Another character that Susanna introduces is Alice Calais, who upon arrival has a mental breakdown and she is then transfer to maximum security. When the girls decide to visit Alice, they are shocked to see that Alice condition has worsened and she has smeared feces all over the wall. The girls are sickened by this, and they vow never to let the same thing happen to them. Susanna immediately starts therapy sessions with Melvin. Susanna also begins to take a liking and rapture in the tunnels below the hospital, she then struggles to convey to Melvin how the tunnels make her feel. Which at first Melvin is concerned, but when Susanna then leaves it alone, he is no longer on “alert.” Once Susanna heals she then searches for a job outside of the hospital, and quickly encounters prejudice that haunts former mental patients. She is not quite able to get a job, since even applying for a telephone operator requires a doctor’s note. Susanna then starts seeing a man, who she had a relationship with before entering into McLean’s. She impulsively accepts the man’s marriage proposal, and then she reflects on the difference between the mind and the brain and reveals to the reader that she was diagnosed: Borderline Personality Disorder. She also describes how the disorder is more common in women than in men, and she wonders if sexism as a part in that. Eventually Susanna, Georgina, and Lisa left McLean, and years later Susanna visits Georgina, who is now married and who is as eccentric as ever. Susanna also runs into Lisa in Harvard Square, who has a young child and lives in the respectable suburb. While talking to Lisa though, Susanna detects traces of Lisa’s old mischief personality beneath her persona of a suburban mother. Before leaving, Lisa asks Susanna: “You ever think of those days in there, in that place?” “Yes,” I answered. “I do think of them.” “Me too.” Lisa shook her head. “Oh well, she said rather jauntily. Then she and her son went down the stairs, underground.” (pg 164) In the final chapter, Susanna reveals why the title of her book, “Girl, Interrupted; separated by twenty years, Susanna stands in front of a painting at New York’s Frick Museum. The painting now holds a very different meaning, then it at another point did; the changing interpretation reflects Susanna’s life experience. After reading Girl, Interrupted, I felt almost an emptiness, which that Susanna could have updated the book with what she has going on in her life now and if Lisa and Georgina are still okay and doing well or if they are still friends. I felt while reading the book that these girls experienced something deeper then everyday friendship, and thus, I wanted to know if their friendship was still strong and did it at last through all these years 1969-2014. I also wished that Susanna would have revealed the characters deeper instead of just mentioning them like they were just passing through; I would have liked to know what happened to Alice, Lisa Cody and Torrey. Also the passing of Daisy could have been more reflected, instead of it seeming like no one really cared. I mean honestly the movie, was more touching when Daisy’s character died. It also showed more of a connection that both Susanna and Lisa were trying to make with Daisy. Especially Lisa, even though she tormented Daisy, in the movie she came across genuinely disturbed and hurt by Daisy’s suicide, same with Susanna. In short, I felt that Susanna rushed through “feelings” during her experience at McLean’s which I believed would have given the book more richer texture to grasp, and understand the characters more. Also the short chapters and jumping back and forth was confusing, I had to reread a chapter to sometimes understand what Susanna was trying to express. I did like the chapter Mind vs. Brain though, when she explains serotonin levels in the brain, and how the synapses work together and how they can also go haywire. When she describes, “If you are not crazy, the second interpreter’s assertion, that this is a bureau, will be acceptable to the first interpreter. If you are crazy, the first interpreter’s viewpoint, the tiger theory will prevail. The trouble here is that the first interpreter actually sees a tiger; the messages sent between neurons are incorrect somehow. The chemicals triggered are the wrong connections.” (pg 140) She is describing how depression and one thinking you are crazy feels like; she is explaining why someone could go “crazy” the chemical unbalance in the brain. All in all I did enjoy Girl, Interrupted but not as much as I enjoyed Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind. I enjoyed Unquiet Mind more due to the fact that Jamison describes the manifestations of her illness, her initial denial and resistance to treatment with medication, attempted suicide and her struggle to maintain an active professional and satisfying life in a more personal and complete way. She does not rush through the chapters, and she is very detailed in her life trails, even describing her loves that she encounter, and one true love that she lost which was devastating to her and that she would always hold a special place in her heart for this man. I enjoy reading how, since Jamison was interested in medicine since she was an adolescent she decided to pursue a career in spite of the mood swings and periods of mental paralysis. Her descriptions of her tug of war with medication (Lithium) are vivid and in the end Jamison makes it clear that she must stay on lithium and remain vigilant. I enjoyed reading Jamison’s descriptions of her manic and depressive stages of her illness, because they are gripping and explosive, she drawled me in with the understanding the seductiveness of the manic state; its intensity, and the energy that it bestowed, how difficult it was for Jamison to give that up by taking lithium. Jamison paint a vivid picture through every stage in her life in the book, (and I honestly have nothing to dislike about it); I would have to say I enjoyed An Unquiet Mind more than Girl, Interrupted.