Loneliness In Dr. Bird's Advice For Sad Poets

James Whitman is a sad poet with anxiety. His anxiousness and loneliness pair with his tendency to bottle up his feelings to form who he is. Throughout Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets, James progressively moves further away from his lonely self, and becomes stronger than before. A lot of James’ personality revolves around his near constant loneliness. In the beginning, James only has one friend, that friend being a fellow high schooler named Derek. He is not the best of friends, but he’s the only person that James has. After being insulted by Derek, James tells the reader: “I should mention he’s my only friend,” (Roskos 9). Seeing as his only friend ruthlessly insults him, there is a lot of doubt surrounding their friendship and if Derek even likes him. At the end of the novel, however, James opens up to Derek and they form a strong bond that

James’ emotions are quite erratic. This is shown the most through his fits of intense anger. At one point, JAmes talks to Sally and begins to hurl insults at her, thinking “...fuck Sally and fuck Beth and fuck my parents and fuck me, most of all,” (Roskos 197). These emotional outbursts occur multiple times throughout the novel, and are a result of James not letting his feelings out. He bottles them up and refuses to let them out, leading to his bottle of feelings to shatter and hurt the people around him. It is shown that James has a lot of emotions inside of him, but he never talks about them. When James is in the middle of a panic attack, he tells himself: “I hate being this way! There’s no way to stop it. It’s my whole body acting against me. MY body and my head - they want me to fail and stay locked in my room,” (Roskos 179). With all this anxiety that James feels, most people would think he should tell someone. However, even with his panic attacks and outbursts, James holds his feelings inside and lets them slowly consume