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Girl Interrupted By Susanna Kaysen Summary

1340 Words6 Pages

The memoir Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen is a unique recollection of a troubling two years in the McLean mental hospital. Kaysen narrates her experience with a whimsy and in-depth analysis of herself, her fellow patients, the hospital, and society as a whole. Part of her purpose for writing this memoir is to evaluate whether she was actually mentally ill, if she really needed to be in that hospital. As she relates her situation to the readers, she captures their attention with the blatant truth which is simultaneously shocking and expository. The readers buy into her story with complete faith which is in part due to the extra-textual reality that binds the memoir to the very real world Susanna Kaysen is writing about. Analyzing the evidence …show more content…

There is a purpose to everything being told to the reader, unlike fiction where the aim is primarily to entertain. “We see life narrative, again, not as a kind of literature but as a constellation of behaviors and processes through which we define ourselves” (Couser, 47). Kaysen’s purpose is to define herself. She’s writing to help her and the audience figure out whether she was truly mentally ill. In Couser’s analysis of Girl, Interrupted he says, “her memoir is not just, or primarily, a memoir of a difficult time in her life but rather an indictment of assumptions about what constitutes mental illness and mental health” (67). Originally one would trust the doctor’s opinion and the readers do learn that Kaysen had visions of killing herself. She took fifty aspirin in hopes of doing so, but immediately after she regretted it and went out in public where she knew someone would see her. In that instance she undoubtable showed signs of needing help. However, beside analyzing her own condition, she focused a lot on the actions of other people in the hospital which gives the readers the sense that Kaysen wasn’t as troubled as others in there. Stuck between her own questionable judgment portrayed through a weak and instantaneously regretted attempt at suicide and her seemingly less problematic mentality compared to other patients is when societal clues through extra-textual reality show to have truly landed her in

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