Conscapism In Woman On The Edge Of Time By Marge Piercy

But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you? No, because you're so b-big and so tough! Well, I'm not big and tough." (Kesey 168) Billy was not actually crazy, he convinced himself of it for those two reasons. However, Billy was depressed, but did not want to admit he was because instead he convinced himself of insanity. In the end not only Billy convince himself of insanity due to that but he also convinced the people around him, until he discovered it was only in his head. The final character in the novel who demonstrates this is Harding. He bottles up his insanity and claims that all his problems come from his wife until one day he lets his feelings go. "I'm not just talking about my wife, I'm talking about my life! I can't seem to get that through to you. I'm not just talking about one person, I'm talking about everybody! I'm talking about form! I'm talking about content! I'm talking about interrelationships! I'm talking about God, the Devil, Hell, Heaven! Do you understand? FINALLY?" (Kesey 54) This proves to the reader that he is not infect insane because he deals with problems and emotions like any other sane human being. Hardings problem is smily that he keeps too bottled up and gives off the idea that he is insane. Through McMurphy proving sanity in the ward, Billy using insanity to cover up depression and Harding using insanity to cover up his true emotions, this proves to the reader that the patients are not insane,

self. The clearest examples of this struggle are shown in the two victims of suicide, Dale Harding and Billy Bibbit. Before their deaths, both characters felt a sense of uneasiness and discomfort in the psychiatric ward. Though they attempt to seem impassive and mentally stable, the men face issues within themselves and their reasons for being in the ward. Harding reveals that his issue within himself concerns his sexuality. He mentions that he feels “inferior” when “looking at the bosom” of his own wife. He also mentions comments about homosexuality, which leads readers to understand that he is in the psychiatric ward due to his sexuality. Due to these internal struggles, Harding decides to drown himself in the ward’s pool. Bibbit, on the other hand, struggles with his self-esteem. He explains that his stutter does not give him much confidence and that he has struggled to ever have relations with a woman. At the end of the story, McMurphy hires Bibbit a prostitute in hopes of gaining money and improving Bibbit’s attitude. When Bibbit is caught with the prostitute by Mrs. Ratched, his anxiety reaches a peak point. Upon being sent to the doctor’s office after being scolded, Bibbit decides to slit his own throat to avoid conflict with the ward and his mother. The internal struggle and violent responses to it show the more serious, life-or-death conflicts in the

Karen Overhill first visits Doctor Richard Baer on January 11, 1989. She has faced a lifetime of sexual, physical, emotional, and mental abuse at the hands of those meant to protect and love her. Though she is initially visits Baer for treatment of severe depression, in the next four years it will become incredibly clear that Karen suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, or, more commonly known, Multiple Personality Disorder. The rest of her treatment becomes dedicated to uncovering the reasons her mind has constructed these personalities and reveal the truth hidden in the periods of time she’s lost.

In the book Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, Susanna Kaysen was only 18 years old when she agreed to enter a medium security psychiatric facility in Boston, McLean hospital in April 1967, after a failed suicide attempt. She insisted that her over dose on aspirin was not a suicide attempt, but after a 20 minute interview the doctor decided she needed to be admitted to a hospital. During her prolonged two-year stay at the hospital Kaysen describes the issues that most of the patients in her ward have to deal with and how they all differently deal with the amount of time they must stay in the hospital for. While in the hospital Kaysen experienced a case of depersonalization where she tried to pull the skin of her hands to see if there were bones underneath, after a failed escape attempt. Soon, after going to therapy and analysis she was labeled as having recovered from borderline personality disorder. After her release she realizes that McLean Hospital provided patients with more freedom than the outside world, by being free responsibility of parental pressure, free from school and job responsibilities, and being free from the “social norms” that society comes up with. Ultimately, being in captivity gave the patients more freedom then in society and created a safe environment in which patients wanted to stay in.

Connie is a young, immature character, who is incredibly self-conscious about her looks, and how people view her. She has a habit of constantly looking at herself in the mirror, and is often scolded at by her mother. Her mother compares Connie to her older sister, June, who receives all the praise. Her mother favors June because she is grown up and makes contributions to the home, as Connie is just in her own realm, usually daydreaming. This creates resentment towards her mother, and Connie wishes that her mother was dead. This most likely fuels her to gain the independence that she is looking for and become the mature adult she acts like outside the home. Connie had completely different

He had even hired a housekeeper to take care of not only the house, but the baby as well. John also controlled almost everything in her life. In fact, the only thing he did not control was her journal writing, and even then she had to hide it from him since he did not approve of it. When he comes she says, "I must put this (the journal) away - he hates to have me write a word"(471). Part of John's problem 1s that he is a doctor. As a doctor, he control's his wife's health care, prescribing her medicines and her overall cure. As her husband, he is too emotionally involved to look at the case objectively, or if he had, he might have seen her mind going before it was too late. Not only that, the accepted "cure" at that particular time was ineffective and would only serve to make his wife worse (473). This "cure" was the product of a certain Dr. Weir Mitchell; a nerve specialist whose theory of a "rest cure" for mentally unstable patients was later found to be unsuccessful. In the story, the husband's ill-advised attempts to treat his wife's symptoms drive her insane by taking all responsibility from her and forcing isolation upon her as a part of her "cure."

The novel translates our problems into real life by showing us how people can, without knowing it, emotionally abuse others because of their lack of knowledge or decisions they have made. The main character Kate, in her adulthood, sees Matt (her older brother) as an unhappy man - because he was unable to follow through with his university dreams. Kate, later attends university expanding her knowledge past that of her brother Matt’s making her feel as if she cannot speak to him in the same way that she used to. At one point in her adulthood Kate said “He was waiting for me to go on, to describe my work to him, but I could not bring myself to do that” (Lawson 275). This connects with the subject matter of emotional abuse because Kate is hurting her older brother Matt. She does not realize that he wants to speak with her and have a relationship with her - she feels that because of her university education she cannot interact with him any more. In the real world many people face emotional abuse. People are ostracized for many reasons including level of intellect or the decisions they have made. Family members and close friends have changed their loved one’s lives because of their opinions on them. In the article Nature vs. Nurture: Mental Illness Triggered By Life Events And Not Through Genetics it is stated that “despite the fact that genetics can potentially influence the individual's mental health, traumatic events are still considered as the most influential factor”. The traumatic event of their parent’s dying resulted in Matt making bad decisions and then later not going university as a result. This caused the greatest tragedy in the novel; the loss of the relationship between Kate and Matt. Kate began to speak less with Matt and when she came to visit him he suffered from anxiety, lack of sleep, etc.. Kate stopped talking to Matt even though

The mentally ill patient relives experiences of the event, such as having distressing images and memories, upsetting dreams, or flashbacks. After undertaking a punch in the stomach from a pimp named Maurice, Holden is at a high stress level which triggers a connection to

By carrying out the Combine?s orders and imposing a matriarchal system, the Big Nurse has the ability to systematically dehumanize the patients and suppress their individuality. In Group Meetings, the men are forced to talk about personal experiences, a method Big Nurse claims is therapeutic but is actually very humiliating. Billy Bibbit talks about his first love who his mother disliked. Billy?s relationships with women seem to be the root of his problems. Nurse Ratched worsens the situation by ?grinding (his) nose in (his) mistakes? instead of helping him work through his problems (59). The patients let the nurse manipulate them in fear of the consequences of her wrath, and consequently are shamed, weak, and defenseless men. Even the Chief, the biggest man, has become a person so weakened by his society that he loses his ability to speak against the cruelty that surrounds him, ultimately leaving him powerless. The men are victims of their society and lose all their self confidence and individuality as a result of being pressured to conform.

She constantly tried to harm her brother and showed signs of dominance when she would abuse him and hurt his genitals. Since she was so engrossed on her body and discovering herself, she became stuck in this stage and as a result of not being able to move on she became aggressive, abusive, and wanting to harm others. Since she was so fixated on harming others, it led to this sadistic behavior and she had this conflict between the drives of the Id and the drives of the Ego. She had impulses to harm others as a result of her being harmed as a child. Being as though she wasn 't cared for and nurtured, she didn 't have loving relationships. She didn 't have the ability to trust others nor did she have the ability to be caring, towards anybody. Since she dealt with a lot of traumatic experiences, she’s been having the same recurring nightmares. She said she has this nightmare where “a man is falling on her and hurting her with a part of himself.” This was a familiar story that I 've once done but on Hysteria with a girl by the name of Bertha Pappenheim. She suffered from hysteria her symptoms are often the surface manifestations of deeply repressed conflicts. I later wrote about her in Studies in Hysteria” (1895). Bertha’s symptoms of this surface manifestation were due to her being sexually abused.

Both the movie and the story emphasize the dramatic separation of understanding between Connie and her mother. The apparent lack of depth in Connie and her father’s relationship dims in comparison to the almost-tangible hatred Connie seems to feel toward her mother, her mother “who had been pretty once too, but now her looks were gone, and that was why she was always after Connie” (Oates 148). Despite the anger she feels, however, it is her mother that Connie cries out to for help in both versions as she sees herself forced to give into Friend’s wishes in an attempt to spare her family the evil he hints will come

John, the narrator’s controlling, but loving, husband represents the atypical man of the time. He wants his wife to get better and to be able to fill the role of the perfect wife that society expected from her. John, being a doctor, did not quite believe that her mental illness was out of her control and insisted on

The plot of the story is Bromden’s worldview is subjugated by his fear of what he calls the Combine, a huge conglomeration that controls society and forces people into conformity. Bromden pretends to be deaf and dumb and tries to go unnoticed, even though he is six feet seven inches tall. The all-male mental patients are divided into Acutes, who can be cured, and Chronics, who couldn’t be cured. They are controlled by Nurse Ratched, a former army nurse who runs the ward with harsh, mechanical precision. Randle McMurphy arrives as a transfer from the work farm; Bromden senses that something is different about him. McMurphy swaggers into the ward and introduces himself as a gambling man. Bromden suffocates McMurphy in his bed, enabling him to die with some dignity rather than live as a symbol of Ratched’s power. Bromden, having improved his immense strength that he had thought was gone during his time in the mental ward, but escapes from the hospital by breaking through a window.

Although a light read, her experience is heart-breaking as she is abused at home, institutionalized, and instead of being treated for her depression, doctor’s attempt to “feminize” her with eye shadow and lipstick. She is the type of advocate that makes noise in a silence because she tells a tale that would otherwise be unknown.

Every generation has had a sub-culture within it that has suffered from feeling alienated by the cultural status quos. From the beat generation of the late 40s, the counter-culture of the 60s, to the Occupy Wall Street movement of today, the challenging of ideas, ethics and traditions has always been relevant. Many writers and novels have been popularized for exploring utopian ideas (such as Aldous Huxley’s The Island) and dystopian possibilities (as in George Orwell’s 1984), but there hasn’t been a novel that explores both of these ideas in a parallel manner quite like Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time. Using the concept of time travel, Piercy is able to place both worlds side by side creating a “grass is