“Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?” - A heavy question that is, when you think about it, almost impossible to answer. ‘Girl, Interrupted’ ponders many questions such as this, and although it doesn’t give us all of the answers, it serves as some reassurance, that none of us really know. The narrator, Susanna Kaysen, begins writing with an already complicated chain of events following her. A phone call to her boyfriend to advise him of her impending suicide, leaves her sitting at home, waiting. Although, as I came to realise, in true fashion of this text, it could never be just that simple. Taking 50 aspirin and then remembering you need to pick up milk and heading to the store, is not your usual suicide story. It could even be seen, perhaps, a cry for help? However we are soon divulged her intention through her own explanation. It was not, in fact, a ‘suicide attempt’, but instead, an attempt at “partial suicide” to kill only the part of herself that no longer …show more content…
At first, she felt “Emptiness and boredom: what an understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair, and depression” (157), but she soon grew closer to not only the other patients, but also her nurses. The quick switches between emotions left an uneasy but somewhat ‘real’ feeling to the story, which only succeeded to make the reader chew through pages faster, in a desperate attempt to see where the next page would lead, to see if the next emotion was something we ourselves had also felt. Trying to find some difference, some evidence that she wasn’t exactly like us, that she was truly crazy. Chapters spiral from her being extremely angry about her existence in the “looney bin”, to having hopeful moments; in which she spoke of her thoughts about her the future or about her relationships with friends in