In your opinion, what is the best literary representation of mental illness?

[mix]

For me, it is the character of John Smith in Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer. His psychological disintegration is driven by history and racism. I have rarely felt so much from a character.

(:hi: new forum)

[UndertheOcean]

1. My vote goes to "The Bell Jar"

[mix]

2. i need to read that n/t

[imdjh]

3. The Children's Hour

Because a sane and innocent person starts to doubt herself when surrounded by lies.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. I Nver Promised You A Rose Garden.

[tularetom]

5. Gregor Samsa

[Gman]

6. Hannibal Rising

is the epitome of mental illness.

[mix]

8. i always wondered what such a character could represent, that makes sense n/t

[Gman]

21. It explains Dr. Lector's pathology

you understand how and why he became a monster.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. One Flew Over the Cucoos Nest, perhaps.

And Catch 22, for insanity of a different sort.

Wasn't sure if you talking about a character's mental illness or the viewpoint of a system, or of an author's mental illness.
or fiction or non-fiction.

[scubadude]

9. Dubya's future autobiography.... nt

[Warpy]

10. That is a good one for paranoia turned into homicidal rage

but there is one harrowing internal dialogue in "Postcards from the Edge" by Carrie Fisher (really) that is the best explanation for what goes on inside an addict's head that I've ever read.

It's not easy reading for those of us without addictions and I imagine it would be painful for those who have confronted them. The rest of the book is witty but so-so. That one dialog should be required reading for anyone who is living with an addict, though. There's no way to read it and not get it.

[mix]

14. all the characters in Indian Killer

had very distinct and believable mental worlds, his white parents in particular, i remain in awe

[Warpy]

17. I've been in awe of Sherman Alexie for many years

He hasn't managed to write a single bad book. Well, if he has, he's got the manuscript hidden somewhere no one will ever find it.

[Goblinmonger]

32. His poetry is just as good as his prose, imo.

We are just adding his newest to our high school curriculum.

[RandomThoughts]

11. A lack of conscious or empathy for a group is more then a mental illness

It is a mind set. If a person does not care about a group, they can treat it like a thing not a person.

Empathy must be wide, and encompass many peoples for people to treat them with dignity.

And in the past we see many examples of people, that through creating a lack of empathy for others, can do terrible things, mostly for self gain.


Love your enemy is really important, and has a huge reason.

Even if you go to battle against someone, if you can still care about them, you will restrain where others hurt, you will talk where others hate, and you will heal where others kill.

Yet you still win the battle, and also the actually good in the world increases.

[Adsos Letter]

12. Jack Prescott in "An Instance of the Fingerpost" is a good example

of someone descending into madness.

[Cirque du So-What]

13. On the subject of adolescent / young adult females...

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen and Cut by Patricia McCormick.

[sandnsea]

15. Fight Club

and also Girl Interrupted.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

16. "The Crack-Up" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I don't think these essay and letters were ever meant to be published, which makes them all the more ravaging, as you read the thoughts of a man who was losing everything. That they were compiled and published after his death made me feel, as I read them, that I was peering, unbidden and unwelcome, into the locked diary of someone I never knew. I felt like a pure interloper, a voyeur, and his words changed my life.....................

[Wwagsthedog]

18. "The Double bind", by Chris Bohjalian. nt

[saltpoint]

19. For individual characters exhibiting mental illness, you can't do much

better than Roger in Golding's LORD OF THE FLIES. He appears to be an overt sociopath.

There are not many literary characters who are beyond redemptive measure, but of the very few there are, I'd rate Roger at the top of the list.

Joan Didion's novels are peopled with several unstable and self-destructive characters. Charlotte Douglas in A BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER would be a contender.

[mix]

20. Lord of the Flies was a very important book for me in 7th grade

i must reread it soon

[saltpoint]

22. Golding gets the job done, that's for sure. Some gritty, blood-racing

moments, plus there is 'Roger,' certainly a sadist, and so far as I know the most remorseless and unredeemable character in fiction.

[Onceuponalife]

23. Robert Bloch's "Psycho" n/t

[BlueIris]

24. Toss up between the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and

the narrator of Susanna Kayson's "Girl, Interrupted." The former has crippling post-partum depression, (which Gilman portrays with gut-wrenching accuracy) and the latter has been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (whether or not the narrator actually had or has this problem is for readers to decide, I think, but Kayson captures her sense of alienation quite well.)

[raccoon]

25. "Going Wrong" by Ruth Rendell.

She takes you inside the protagonist's mind and you can understand his convoluted thinking.

[mix]

26. ***thanks for all the great posts and suggestions***

:applause:

[Sequoia]

27. Sybil

[auditguy]

28. 'The Bird's Nest' by Shirley Jackson

[mzteris]

29. Lisa, Bright and Dark

by John Neufeld


Except I think it helped make me "more crazy" when I was in highschool. I worried about my mental state even then.

[libguy9560]

30. It's a toss up between

Catcher in the Rye or One flew over the cuckoo's nest.

[litlady]

31. The Yellow Wallpaper should get a nod. nt

[bluescribbler]

33. Madness in Literature

That was the title of a Comparative Literature course I took in college back in the 1970's. The reading list for that course contians many excellent candidates. Ones I recall include:

The Sufferings of Young Werther, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Bacchae, by Euripides
Don Quixote, by Cervantes
Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
No Longer Human, by Osamu Dazai
Nausea, by Jean Paul Sartre
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

[LWolf]

34. I don't do "bests," but I agree that John Smith is definitely a contender.

I felt such pain for him.

[bain_sidhe]

35. The Speed of Dark

A near-future story told from the point of view of an autistic man, offered the chance to be "cured" of his autism. Written by Elizabeth Moon, a woman who happens to have an autistic son.

Although I'd also have to agree that Lisa, Bright and Dark ranks up there, too.

[Rowdyboy]

36. "The Beach" by Alex Garland.....the movie sucked but the novel was exceptional

The mental disintegration was slow but terrifying

[MilesColtrane]

37. "Good Morining, Midnight" - Jean Rhys...clinical depression

"Crime and Punishment" - Dostoyevsky...paranoia

"The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold" - Evelyn Waugh...psychosis

[non sociopath skin]

38. My nomination would be "Hangover Square" by Patrick Hamilton ...

... an author shamefully neglected, even in his native UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Hamilton_(dramatist)

BTW the Film Noir of the same title is only loosely based on the novel and not half as good IMHO

The Skin

[smoogatz]

39. Maybe Septimus, from Mrs. Dalloway.

Woolf nails his perceptions, at least to my ear. And she had some considerable personal experience with mental illness to back it up, of course.