Themes In Susanna Kaysen's Girl Interrupted

Under the Water Why do humans have eyes? Is there a God, or have we organically made something up to justify the idea that we were made for a reason? Why should I care about my own life or anyone else’s? There is not really an answer for any of these questions other than “I don’t know.” These are wonderings that you would expect from someone who’s a little out of touch with reality, but then again, what is reality other than an idea someone thought up. These cloudy and restless ideas are of the same nonsensical but provocative nature as the thoughts that add character to Susanna Kaysen’s memoir, Girl, Interrupted. There are many recurring themes in Susanna Kaysen’s reflection on her stay in Mclean hospital that help to animate not only
For example, one chapter is called “Velocity Vs. Viscosity” and the one following immediately after is called “Dental Health.” They are completely unrelated in content, with the former chapter being about the “two varieties of insanity: slow and fast” while the next chapter is about a trip to the dentist. The disjointedness of the narrative, while seemingly just due to the unpredictable nature of Kaysen’s writing, is actually purposefully so. This is another sordid commentary on how time moved for her during her stay at Mclean. The improper movement of her storytelling is a reference to one of the main motifs of the story: time. Time is essentially the most important thing to Susanna during the story’s progression, the loss of it being the source of extreme stress for her more than once. The sporadic patterns of the chapters help to illustrate this by emphasizing the chaotic passage of time and the fact that by nature, time is not
Kaysen cites the importance of detachment to be suicidal. Daisy, another patient at Mclean had been sexually abused by her father and was schizophrenic. She is mentioned a few times, then seems to almost disappear from the plot until her briefly being mentioned, only as an afterthought. It is through this little afterthought mentioning of her that we find out that she has committed suicide. Susanna is certainly not upset, in fact, she’s almost annoyed and envious of her courage to actually commit suicide. The other example of this deep neuroticism is Polly. Polly was a patient at Mclean who doused herself with gasoline and lit a match. Her body was covered in burns and she was horribly disfigured, yet Susanna almost seemed to envy her. “Why did she do it? Nobody asked because what courage! Twenty Aspirin, a little slit along the wrist, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: we’ve all had those. Even putting a gun in your mouth though, you taste it, and suddenly the whole world lies between you and the moment you pull the trigger. The world defeats you, and you put the gun back in the drawer. The world didn’t defeat her before she lit that match” (Kaysen 17). This almost callous reflection on what it takes to commit suicide is very typical of Susanna throughout the book. She consistently recalls wishing that she had had the guts to stay in her room after taking 50 pills, rather than running into the street