Cut By Patricia Mccormick Analysis

Thematic Essay Cut by Patricia McCormick is based on a girl named Callie. She has family troubles at home with her brother Sam, her mother, and her dad. Callie starts to cut herself, getting instantly addicted because she feels that it ‘relieves her pain’. Her family soon finds out and they send her to a treatment facility named Sea Pines (or Sick Minds as Callie likes to call it), that helps people deal with drug abuses, mental illnesses, and disorders. Callie stops talking when she arrives to Sea Pines, ignoring therapists, her group of girls that she was put in for Sea Pines, and even her family. Through Callie’s experiences in Cut, the reader can learn that stressful situations could bring you harm. Callie’s family wasn’t a very typical

The first time her mom and Sam visited, Sam went to go get a candy bar out of the vending machine (17). Because he was occupied Callie’s mother slipped in a few words when Sam wasn’t there, saying: “We got a letter from the insurance company, They won’t pay for your... your treatment here. They say they won’t pay because this thing that you do, you know, cutting yourself, they say it’s self inflicting They don’t cover things that are self inflicting.” (17). This doesn’t help Callie’s state that she’s in right now. If her mother keeps telling her about the troubles that they are going through in detail, Callie can’t just forget that. After her mom says that, Callie spaced out, “I tried to concentrate on what the mother was saying... The mother’s mouth was moving but the character who was me was walking away” (18). She says this in a third person point of view as though she faded out of the reality, and watched herself get up. That’s when she walked into the visitor’s bathroom, and cut her wrist with the teeth of the paper towel dispenser (18), “There was a jab, bright beads of blood, and finally I was OK.” Callie stated after (18). Throughout the story this didn’t affect her anymore, until one night, Callie was about to go to sleep when she got notified that she got a call, she walked to the phone booths and answered it. On the other line was her mother. She tells Callie, “They [Sea Pines] say they might send you home... They won’t let you back in school either, not until you’ve had your treatment.” She then explains that it’s costing their family lots of money, her father will get really mad, and so on (48). At this point Callie is not listening, she starts to imagine the surroundings around her warp. She describes it as “The door of the tiny booth quivers, it narrows, then expands... The floor of the booth pitches up, then it swims away.” (48). These details sounds like Callie is