Parallel Universe

“Every window on Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco”

A parallel universe is an imaginary, fictional distinct reality parallel to ones own life. So far, in the memoir Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen she has been definetly interrupted about the fact that she is living in a parallel universe, which she explains is the “worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying…” (5). 

She tells us that it is very easy to “slip” into this universe. The thing about this universe is that each time you find out about more things, and that its weird, because once you are in this world you can see what you left behind and you can see your other world. You are aware about what you left behind.  You are in a way, trapped. Just like a prisoner. And even the most dangerous prisoners, which used to be ‘kept’ in Alcatraz get to see something beautiful everyday, and she implies that she does not. And that even if she is not in a prison, she feels like if she were, because she is very much imprisoned by her disease.

So, First impressions of the book:

This woman, Susanna Kaysen is telling me about a whole other world that co-exists in our own. How weird is that?

She does not only write in a very weird way, like “People ask, How…”, “All I can tell them is, It’s..” (5)  adding capital letters were she shouldn’t, but also, the first page of the book is a CASE RECORD FOLDER in which it clearly indicates that she has Borderline Personality Disorder.

As explained by the U.S Library of Medicine,  BPD is a condition in which people have “long-term patters of unstable or turbulent emotions” which they feel about themselves or other people around them.

All of this that they feel and they experience causes them to take imprudent, or thoughtless extreme actions.

People with BPD tend to have muddled relationships with people.

As I was picking my memoirs out in the EVL, I wanted something that would interest me, something intense. I think I got enough intense from the first 7 pages of the book.

I am going to enjoy this memoir. 

Interpunctione

Le Punctuation. 

Every powerful piece of writing must use as reference ideas from other people, even though we write what comes to our mind and in our own words, most of the times the topic we are writing about has been already expressed by somebody else. For a paper to be notable it has to use reputable sources to make the argument more powerful. “It serves as an argument in one’s own defense.[1] In order to give credit to that “borrowed authority.”[2] Look, im blogging about quotations and I’m quoting to back up what I’m saying at the same time!!! Cool… Anyways, lets continue…

Quotations have had lots of interpretations; one, as I’ve said before is when we are citing something that is not ours, to let the reader know it’s someone else’s in order to respect the other person. Another comical use is when we use them in a sarcastic form imitating or mocking someone else.

Even though we are expected to learn how to correctly use punctuation and capitalization in sentences since first grade, and we continue to practice these skills in second grade and throughout our whole school life, in eleventh grade we haven’t yet mastered this skill. We continue to misuse the different punctuation marks. I’m not sure if its because we lack to study each punctuation mark as much as we study the composition of a right triangle in math or if we just haven’t had enough practice with each punctuation mark and we just want to stay in the comfort zone of the period and comma. Each punctuation mark has more than just one usage yet we tend to overuse ones like comas and semicolons when actually we are just misusing them without knowing.

Each time of punctuation has its history and its evolution, it’s when we understand its use and history that we can master this skill. “Even the good old comma has continued to evolve…”[3] just a simple (,) has had so many places in our history and has helped us frequently. By using punctuation it is a way to “return something to the text” and it is also a “ritual of reciprocation.”

Important people in our societies have used these types of punctuation like Montesquieu, Burke, and Parkes.

What we learn today in class is not just about punctuation it is much more because in order to further improve our writing skills we should pay more attention to punctuation because a better use of punctuation can be the difference between a great piece of writing to a first draft.

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[1]  The Bars Of Atlantis, Page 76.

[2]  The Bars Of Atlantis, Page 76.

[3] Survival of the Fittest, Nicholson Baker, page 3. 

Blink Bauby, Blink Brent.

Will & Way. 

 “The art of speaking clearly so that each word is clearly heard and understood.”

I just cited Wikipedia, but what I mean is that diction is not only the authors word choice and style in a story, but it also refers to how well the author can articulate his words.

In the memoir The Burn Journals Brent has just tried to commit suicide, and as soon as he gets to the hospital he can’t even talk. It’s not that he forgot to do so, but he is just  to hurt to do it. “I wish I could talk and say something so she’d understand me” pg 26. He has “plastic in his mouth” which is “keeping him from saying anything.” He is not able to pronounce anything because he is so hurt and he can’t use his mouth.

At the beginning of the book he is in a lot of pain, and this is one of the main reasons why he can’t enunciate well. He is full of plastic and tubes and he is not able to communicate. I can say that at the beginning of the novel Brent has not yet mastered the “art of speaking clearly.” He is struggling with speech and it’s going to take him a long time to recover.

There is a moment when Brent has to communicate through a board. The people in the hospital point out at the letters and he blinks when he wants them to stop. This is in some ways similar to Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French Journalist, who after suffering from a stroke woke up and realized that he was speechless and that the only movement he had was blinking his left eyelid. He suffered from the locked-in syndrome and even with this condition he wrote an entire memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. He did this with the help of his nurses. They dictated him the alphabet and he would blink when he wanted that letter.

2 years after his accident he published his book in 1997; unfortunately he suffered from pneumonia and died 3 days later. He is remembered to day because of his incredible achievements even though his accident.

Brent Runyon is remembered today as the boy who lit himself on fire.

Once again, this book shows us that in life there will be a lot of obstacles and that even in the most difficult circumstances there is always a way of getting what you want. You know what they say “If there is a will, there is a way.” 

Brent’s Vocab Choices… Oh Yeah!

Communication.

Brent employs an informal diction so we can connect more with him as a burn victim. We are able to take part in his life because he lets us in. Throughout the book, we are able to see intimate feelings, and a lot of mixed emotions that occur in just a few months while he is in the hospital, and in his pathway to recovery. He changes a lot because of this episode in his life and we are able to see this in the way that he refers to things and persons in his life.

Brent makes his memoir unique by showing emotion. In every sentence, even if he is just aggravated and just f-wording the world, he shows emotion. ‘This fucking sucks’, ‘I have to fucking share a room..’ pg 175 Once again Brent Runyon’s choice of words makes the memoir distinctive. He curses and he is inappropriate, and this is normal in a teenager.

Once again, he writes to us telling his story as if he were 14, so he can connect more. He uses common expressions to relate to us ‘that’s awesome’ ‘so cool’. ‘that sucks’-156 We relate to the authors language because he writes/speaks just like us.

In many ways this is a very masculine book, I’m not a boy, clearly. But many of the readers are, and he tries to connect to this audience. He doesn’t only use ‘distinctive vocab choices’, but he expresses himself as a 14-year-old boy would. “I’m definitely getting an erection…”pg 156 I cant relate to that but I am sure a teenage boy can. “Who takes her shirt off and has really nice tits.” Pg 98 This style is more likely to appeal to this kind of audience. I am talking to much about audience here. Audience isn’t really my point. Anyhow, Brent’s style and expression are shown because of his different choices of words.

“Going to get nightmares” pg 152.

You can’t just say that, end the paragraph and start a new one. He does this to create a more familiar environment he doesn’t really finish the sentence but we understand what he wants to say and communicate to us.

And, at the end of the book in the acknowledgements, Brent uses different choices of sentences. “Thanks to my mom and dad and Craig…” instead of writing thanks to my mom, dad and Craig. He adds the and maybe just because he wasn’t sure he wanted to include Craig in his acknowledgment, or he wanted us to make it seem like it but really he just wanted to make one last grammatical error.

The different ways that Brent writes all relate to diction because what he is really doing is trying to get to us and by his different choices in his writing we can understand his style. 

I'ts over. Is it?

Then...Its Over

What does Brent Runyon feel today/ while he writes, about his story? The tone of this memoir is fixed at the beginning of the book when we know that he is going to commit suicide, when he tells us. After burning himself he tells us how his life changed forever after that one awful mistake.

Before I tell you about what he feels after the accident, I am going to tell you what happened during he was lighting himself on fire. It really happened in a matter of seconds, the whole aftermath of the ‘lighting himself on fire’ is about 300 pages long, when in reality the burning part lasts about 1 page.

We don’t get a lot of feelings from the author in this moment, it just happens. Then its over. He uses very focused sentences and tells us exactly what we want to hear.

“I can’t breathe. I’m screaming” pg 20 Really short but painful sentences in which we don’t understand what he really feels since he expresses little or no emotions towards the fact that he has set himself on fire. He has not understood the magnitude of the subject. He will soon understand what he did and he wont like to “Find out what death is like.” Pg 20 Very robotic choice of words, at the moment he isn’t really expressing much, but he will.

Then, when he arrives to the hospital we can see how lonely Brent was and he feels as if he were different from everybody else.

“And everybody’s talking, but nobody’s talking to me. Somebody just said my urine is red. I don’t want red urine. I want to cry and I want to sleep. I want to go back.” Page 23

‘I want to go back’ shows us how much he regrets what he did and that he grew up to realize that what he did was in fact irrational and that he “didn’t have anything to be sad about” pg 94. Here, he is very genuine and honest about what he felt in the moment and what he feels now. We notice that when he wrote this he really meant this and he wanted to let us know that he didn’t really want to be in the place that he was in.

In this part of the book we can see that until know only in the first moments of his mistakes he has already learned about what it is to be an adult and that one decision can change your life forever.

He is constantly telling us how much he wants to be back home and that he doesn’t want to be in the place that he is in right now.  

“They tell me that home is fine and I’ll be home soon. But I want to be home now.” Pg 26

 We can feel that the author understood he made a mistake and that he now looks back and is willing to accept the fact that what he did was wrong and that he was in a really bad place in his life.

Sometimes in life we don't understand what we are doing, until we do. Sometimes we don't know what we had, until we loose it.