Summary Of Jim Steven's Poem 'Schizophrenia'

Jim Steven’s poem “Schizophrenia” depicts a story of immense loss and hopelessness that overcomes many homes. It is all too ordinary to hear about a father abandoning his family, a mother who is broken and feels defeated, and the children who have suffer through it all in fear and the overwhelming feeling of abandonment. Feelings such as those found in the preceding sentence are found throughout Jim Steven’s poem “Schizophrenia”. The poem reflects the conflicts that occur within the house. However, the crisis that is occurring within the family is addressed indirectly rather than directly, it is addressed through personifying the house. By personifying the house in every facet, “Schizophrenia” reveals the reality of the family’s relationships, or lack thereof. Steven’s “Schizophrenia” is about a house that is troubled with mental illness. The house itself is a representation of the illness within the household and it mirrors the family as a whole. The entirety of the poem is a metaphor in which the house is compared to the family. In addition to the metaphor comparing the house and
Overall, masking your feelings is often considered a masculine trait and throughout the poem the narrator does not show any emotion. The poem also seems to come from an outside perspective, yet not a perspective too far off. The speaker is not the one engaging in the arguing and fighting, but perhaps he is a child observing his two disputing parents. The stanza “certain doors were locked at night, feet stood for hours outside them” (427) further indicated to me that the narrator was a child whenever this poem took place. He observed as his father standing outside of the locked bedroom door, yelling to be let in. He also observed as the dishes piled up in the sink due to the fact that his mother was too occupied with fighting to wash