Misunderstanding A Teenager: Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted. Susanna Kaysen. April 19, 1994. Vintage.

Plot:
Susanna Kaysen was a 18 year old who had went to see a "regular" doctor, as she thought. Little did she know, the doctor immediately put her into a taxi sending her out to Mclean Hospital. Entering the hospital, Kaysen grew into comfort with her roommate (Georgina) and forcefully new hospital friends. Jim Watson was a visitor of Susanna who tried to convince her to escape, but she denied the risk. Everything Susanna needed to do, even if it was as simple as typing a paper, She felt it was a life or death situation. Kaysen was repeatedly caught comparing her self to fellow patients. Daisy was a fair haired beautiful girl who committed suicide. There was also the run aways, the Lisa’s. She was not ready to agree with the fact she was being sent to a "nut house" because compared to everyone else, she was perfectly fine. She didn’t feel comfortable with the fact that nurses didn’t want to accept who she was out in public so she would act out to cause embarrassment. Kaysen being in the hospital, had had a boyfriend before the situation. He would occasionally visit her, until an inappropriate incident happen leading to his absence. Kaysen repeatedly judged the fact that her check up was not long enough for the ability to be sent to the hospital so quick.

Towards the middle of the book, Kaysen Started realizing that even if she acted normal, she wasn’t going to be viewed as normal. Doctors would blow everything out of proportion. Martin Luther King was murdered, with many others at the time. People encouraging these acts made the patients not want to act out anymore. Everything was being acted out for them, they loved to watch. Susanna had a very hard time at accepting herself but wanted to push herself forward. As she says "...many of us have spent our hospital years yelling and causing trouble and were ready to move on to something else" (Kaysen 124) Kaysen was tired of getting put into the "crazy" category when she’s trying to move passed it. Susanna Kaysen is nearly 20 towards the end of the book and finds out she was diagnosed of being instable with her self image cause emptiness and boredom. She has moved passed all her struggles, and takes the responsibility to reflect back. Her beliefs show that her descriptions were nothing serious, just the normal behavior of a teenager.

Quotation:

“… Smokism. Its one of the reasons I became a writer: to be able to smoke in peace.” (Kaysen 133)

Quotation Context:

Susanna was working two jobs and one of them was being a typist. In the job headquarters, all supervisors were men and typist were women. Supervisors smoked whenever they wanted and typist had to wait until their break and smoke in the bathroom. Both, smoking and writing were one of Susanna’s favorite things to do and of course she would want to do them together. She felt like she can release her stress through doing these and get passed her troubles. This quote is a wonder slice of what I enjoyed about the book. In Kaysen’s writing, you see signs of growth and why she even wrote this book about herself.