“I wasn’t a danger to society. Was I a danger to myself? The fifty aspirin- I’ve explained them. They were metaphorical. I wanted to get rid of a certain aspect of my character. I was performing a kind of self-abortion with those aspirin. It worked for a while. Then it stopped; but I had no heart to try again” (Kaysen 39).
At the beginning of the novel, Kaysen takes a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka, because she "had a headache." She explains that she wasn't trying to kill herself necessarily, but rather kill a part of herself. Afterwards, she realizes that what she did didn't really work at all; she was just trying to avoid her problems.
“Don’t ask me what life means or how we know reality or why we have to suffer so much, Don’t talk about how nothing feels real, how everything is coated with gelatin and shining like oil in the sun. I don’t want to hear about the tiger in the corner or the Angel of Death or the phone calls from John the Baptist. He might give me a call too. But I’m not going to pick up the phone” (Kaysen 125).
After her stay in the mental hospital, Kaysen seems to realize that it is all just mental; everything is uncontrollable. She knows that some things might appear to be unreal, but she is going to ignore them from now on, and focus on what is real to get her life on track.
“In a strange way we were free. We’ reached the end of the line. We had nothing more to lose. Our privacy, our liberty, our dignity: All of this was gone and we were stripped down to the bare bones of our selves” (Kaysen 94).
In the hospital, Kaysen realizes that everyone there has nothing left; though their privacy was gone and they were monitored 24/7, they were free because they could be themselves. The patients could get no lower than a mental institution, they didn't need to pretend: they were free because they were around people like themselves.
I think it's really interesting to read books with a theme of depression. No one really knows what the thoughts of a depressed person are like. We all seem to assume that they want to die, but maybe, like the character in this book, there is more to it than that. I liked your topic and I think I might just read Prozac Nation. Thanks! =)
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