English Notes
Girl, Interrupted
1.
November 18, 2015
Homework 39-63 for Friday
Review of Discussion Questions
Why include the medical documents:
 To make it authentic
 To contrast the author’s point of view vs. the medical records
 Discloses her diagnosis: schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder
 Medical record on the first page—immediately discloses to the memoir reader the
writer’s “label” or classification
 Discloses suicide attempt
 Her family is wealthy, privileged background
 Including the medical documents throughout the book adds to its honesty—she is willing
to expose her past. It adds legitimacy to her story.
2. The passage from sanity to insanity is gradual—it just happens—you slip into it.
3. “Every window on Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.”—Alcatraz represents the mental
hospital, San Francisco represents the real world. She is imprisoned in the mental institution, but
knows that there is a world outside. She knows that there is an outside world, yet she lacks
access to it.
4. “The Taxi”—in the last sentence of the chapter Susanna laments that she is in a taxi, not on the
train. She doesn’t seem upset that she is going to the mental hospital. Is she feeling relieved?
5. Etiology--the cause, set of causes, or manner of causation of a disease or condition.
6. Historical perceptions of mental illness: supernatural causes (witches, demons, devil), caused by
evil, had a religious view, was tamed by electroshock therapy.
7. “Fire” reveals how Susanna tried to kill herself by ingesting aspirin. She also reflects on her
suicidal thoughts (barrel of a gun inside a mouth).
8. Lisa: bold, toilet papers furniture, runs away, doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, sees herself as a sociopath.
Questions and answers for pages 25-38
1.
New information about Susanna in “The Secret of Life”:
 The Secret of Life—Watson helped discover DNA
 Jim Watson came to visit—man in his 50s, wants her to leave, move to England
 She doesn’t leave the hospital
 She has a boyfriend who doesn’t visit
 Father doesn’t visit—busy
 English teacher was fired and moved to NC, wouldn’t visit
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
What is Susanna’s relationship to Jim Watson? Why do you think he visits her?
 Maybe he wants to take care of her? Feels a sense of responsibility to her?
 She has a connection to a Nobel Prize winner (discovered DNA)—what does this say
about her status?
Lisa says “Rnnn.” She mimics the sound of Watson’s car speeding off/the word RUN. Susanna
didn’t run away-Lisa would have taken the opportunity. Susanna accepts that this is where she
belongs
Things happened in the mental hospital before they happened in the real world:
 People in the hospital may become accustomed to craziness
 The reality inside the hospital is different from the reality in the real world
 When people in the real world act crazy, it becomes shocking news. People in the
mental hospital would not be surprised.
 1967, her admission date, bridges to 1968—years of great political unrest, Civil Rights
movement, assassinations of Bobby Kennedy/Martin Luther King Jr., Vietnam War
Relationship between the world of the mental hospital and the real world:
 Not feeling pain anymore (Georgina has felt internal pain, doesn’t feel the hot caramel
Susanna accidentally pours on her hand)
 G. Gordon Liddy—in the real world (normal) held his hand to a candle flame to learn
how withstand pain—Is he crazy, too?
 Is Georgina strong? Is she living in a fantasy world where her father is a CIA operative?
Is G. Gordon Liddy crazy? Consider how each is viewed.
Daisy’s story:
 Daisy’s suicide—connection to Susanna’s attempted suicide
 Daisy’s father was in love with her—he brings her chicken to eat
 She subsists on chicken and laxatives
 Keeps chicken carcasses in her room
 Lisa gained entry into Daisy’s room by offering laxatives (she pretended she was
constipated and got extras from the nursing staff to bargain with). She tells the girls
about Daisy’s room—the chicken carcasses, the apartment her father bought her, he
hope “If you lived here, you’d be home by now”—this fleshes out Daisy’s story before
her suicide.