Girl Interrupted Character Analysis

The film “Girl, Interrupted” is a true story adapted from the original memoir by Susanna Kaysen. Set in the 1960s, it relates her experiences during her stay in a mental institution after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder following a suicide attempt. Many films include characters with a mental illness; the actors who play these characters have the immense challenge of staying true to the illness they portray.

It is often said that the people one surrounds themselves with can reflect things about themselves, such as their beliefs and ideals. One’s friends and acquaintances can reveal subconscious attractions to people that fulfill their ideals or agree with the things they say, but these relationships can also help one discover their personal philosophies by reinforcing opposing views. Indeed, in J.D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye, the way Holden reacts to and interacts with secondary characters reveal his established philosophies and the values he holds most dear to him.

The movie, “Girl, Interrupted” by Susanna Kaysen, offers an individual perspective on what it is like to live in a mental institution. As a troubled teenager, Susanna was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, in which she disagreed with. Susanna parents and a family friend recommended her to admit herself into a mental hospital named Claymoore because she had overdosed on aspirin and vodka. Within, the 18 months that Susanna stayed in the mental hospital she came across many individuals that she had a connection with and considered them to be her friends, particularly a girl named Lisa. Lisa had a very negative personality and can be manipulative. Once, Susanna began to make friends in the ward, she started to get comfortable, and accustomed to the lifestyle of the institution. Throughout, the movie individuals will have an outlook on how social control of deviance, medicalization of deviance, the idea of total institutions and demedicalization come into play in mental institutions.

In the movie Girl, Interrupted the plot surrounds a period in the life of Susanna Kaysen played by Winona Ryder who was institutionalized at the Claymore mental hospital in the 1960s. In the movie, the main character Susanna is diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and undergoes treatment to which at the end of the movie she is released. It is at this hospital that Susanna encounters many other patients of which she shares many experiences with. One of these patients was the longtime resident and popular amongst all the other patients Lisa Rowe played by Angelina Jolie whom Susanna became close with and would mid-movie escape the hospital with to only return on her own and find that Lisa would be back a few days later. Lisa, while being the protagonist of the movie, was very charismatic in her own way and based on her behavior and revelation in the movie is diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, particularly a sociopath in the movie.

In this world, there are two sides to everything. Whether it may be a message, a film or a novel, each platform of literature has two different windows. The first being the depiction of the author and the second being the interpretation of the audience. This concept is evident within both works this essay seeks to explore. In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest, a charismatic criminal, Randle P. McMurphy is admitted to a state asylum due to his will of serving out of prison sentence in a mental hospital rather than the penitentiary. McMurphy brings in the outside world to the admitted patients after being legally declared insane through a condensed interview with a psychiatrist. He symbolizes freedom, life and the power of an

Girl Interrupted is a movie based on Susanna Kaysen’s novel, which was inspired by her stay in a mental institution in the 1960s. Incidentally the main character, played by Winona Ryder, is named Susanna. She is eighteen years old and begins the movie by reflecting back on the events leading up to her visit to the psychologist. She has just graduated from high school and other than being an aspiring writer, has no plans for her life. In addition she has flashbacks of her attempted suicide, though she denies taking a bottle of aspirin with vodka. When she was brought to the hospital they found bruises on her wrist, but she claimed she had

18 year old Caucasian woman by the name of Susanna Kaysen was voluntarily admitted to a Psychiatric Hospital after an overdose of aspirin and alcohol. This young lady explained that she was not intentionally trying to harm herself, but was only trying to get rid of a headache.

Girl, Interrupted (1999) directed by James Mangold is largely based on a semi- autobiographical book by the same title. The movie chronicles eighteen year old Susanna Kaysen’s experiences surrounding her stay at a mental institution. It is 1967, a time of social change and unrest. Susanna makes a half-heart attempt at suicide, ingesting a bottle of aspirin and chasing the pills with a bottle of vodka. She is taken to the emergency room, her stomach is pumped and she survives. Afterwards she meets with a psychologist who explores her more recent feelings and experiences. The psychologist concludes, with her parents assent, that she would benefit from a stay at Claymore, a private mental institution. The next year and nine months forever

I am reading Girl, Stolen by April Henry, and I am on page 213. This book is about Cheyenne Wilder a girl who was in a car accident and ending up losing most of her vision. Cheyenne was accidentally kidnapped by a guy named Griffin. He meant to only take the car, he did not notice that there was a girl in the car. Griffin's dad Roy found out that Cheyenne was the daughter of the president of Nike. So Griffin’s dad asked for a ransom than he was going to kill Cheyenne. Then Giffin ended up helping Cheyenne escape. In this paper, I will be characterizing Cheyenne the main character in this story. I will also be questioning why Griffin helped Cheyenne escape.

The study of mental health has always been a challenging topic. As a society, we are quick to judge individuals who don’t conform to social norms, especially when there is not a distinct line between insane and indifferent. The movie, Girl, Interrupted examines the challenges of a young woman who has been diagnosed as having a borderline personality disorder. The lead character, Susanna, has been faced with depression and attempts suicide upon graduating high school. The suicide attempt proves to be unsuccessful and her family seeks out the help of a family psychiatrist to persuade Susanna in seeking help at a mental health facility. At the beginning of the movie we see Suzanna reluctantly agree to self-admit herself to the facility, but protest

Girl, Interrupted provides an in-depth look into Susanna Kaysen’s experience of living with a mental illness and staying in a mental hospital. Twenty-five years after she leaves McLean she learns of her diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and discusses it in her memoir. Kaysen reads about her disorder from the DSM-III-R and views her diagnosis as:

Sarah Goldfarb suffered from an addiction to amphetamines which were prescribed to her as diet pills and also suffered from stimulant psychosis. Addiction is defined as a compulsive substance use despite the harmful consequences of said substance to ones health and life. Stimulant psychosis is a psychosis symptom which includes auditory and visual hallucinations, paranoia, and/or delusions which are caused by an overdose or high use of psychostimulants.

John Hughes's The Breakfast Club is one of film history’s most iconic and renowned movies and is a cornerstone of 1980’s pop-culture. The Breakfast Club showcases five unique high school students who all unfortunately find themselves imprisoned in an all-day Saturday detention. The students go as following: Claire (a pretty girl), Brian (the nerd), John (the bad boy), Andrew (an athlete), and Allison (the strange, goth girl). These students come from very different backgrounds and social settings which proves to spark many conflicts between them as well as with their supervisor Mr. Vernon. But through this conflict they find similarities between themselves, and after spending nine hours locked up together, they find resolution within themselves and with their new friends. Psychology can explain why this happened as well as what caused other events to occur. This paper will examine four different psychological phenomena: stereotypes, conformity/normative social influence, ingroup versus outgroup/superordinate goals, and the various causes of attraction.

Susana Kaysen is a fictional character in the movie, Girl, Interrupted. She is an 18 year old young adult, who suffers from mental illness. Susana had multiple behaviors that can be defined as abnormal. Susana’s behaviors can be grouped into four categories. The first one is deviance, which is defined by behaviors that differ from society’s norms. Susana was known to be promiscuous and have multiple sexual relationships. One sexual relationship she had was with an older man, and it happened to be a teacher. Another behavior that can be seen as deviance is her unwanted desire to attend college. At her age and in the time of the movie, it was an expectation to attend college and receive a degree. However, Susana did not want to attend a university. Another deviant behavior is Susana’s substance abuse problem with alcohol, cigarettes, and pills. Susana also displayed deviance by not following the rules in the ward. She would not take her medication and she would sneak out. At one point she even escaped for several days. These deviant behaviors were Susana’s ways of acting out.

The movie, Girl, Interrupted, displays Susanna Kaysen’s eighteen-month stay at a mental institute in the 1960s. This film was an adaptation of a book based on a true story of the main character and author Susanna Kaysen. Susanna was checked into Claymore, a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts, after chasing a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. At first, Susanna denies this blatant attempt at suicide and constantly struggles with uncertainty of her thoughts and emotions. Although Girl, Interrupted exhibits several mental disorders one of the most prevalent disorder of this film is Susanna’s Borderline Personality Disorder. This film depicts majority of the signs and symptoms of a person with Borderline Personality. As stated in the textbook, “the lives of persons with borderline personality are marked by instability. Their relationships are unstable, their behavior is unstable, their emotions are unstable, and even their images of themselves are unstable” (Larsen and Buss 593). Susanna’s romantic relationships are extremely unstable and she frequently engages in casual sex. She jumps from one guy to another in a matter of few weeks. One scene that establishes this the most is when her boyfriend at the time comes to visit her at Claymore and expresses his true feelings for her and she instantly withdraws. He asked her to go to Canada with him and she turns him down immediately. She also kisses Lisa who she befriends at the mental institute, displaying a switch of