Augusten Burroughs 'Memoir' Running With Scissors

In Augusten Burroughs’ memoir, Running with Scissors, he recalls the strange occurrences and circumstances of his early years of life that have shaped him to be the peculiar way he is. His life began in a broken home, with an alcoholic and emotionally distant father who both neglected his son and directed his pent up anger towards Augusten’s mentally fragile mother. Their home was often plagued by series of doctors, though one quite unlike the others. Dr. Finch, Augusten’s mother’s psychiatrist was an odd man who worked magic on his patients with unorthodox techniques. When Augusten’s father abandoned him and his mother, the two sought additional help from the doctor. His mother, who was unstable and unfit to take care of herself and much less

so a son, was struck with paranoia that her ex-husband was on a homicidal and vengeful mission and search for her. In trying to protect herself and her son, she reached out to Doctor Fitch who recommended her taking cover while he watched over Augusten.
Augusten, being obsessed with cleanliness, was horrified by the Fitches and their chaotic home, and even less enthusiastic about his extended stay.

However, their way of life slowly and surely became less alarming and less foreign to Augusten. The characters that reside in the Fitch home allow him to grow and expand his view and perspective. Other patients of the doctor reside in the home as well, in place of the similar experience to staying in a psychiatric ward. Both the patients and the members of the Fitch family offer colorful stories in contrast to the prim and proper life Augusten had been living previously. Hope and Natalie Fitch, two of the doctor’s bickering sisters, soon became Augusten’s dearest friends. Hope, who was nearly twice his age, taught him to live more freely through her child like spirit. She opened his mind through her spontaneous actions and casual but close relationship with God. He and Natalie, who was just a year older and initially struck him as the most outlandish and peculiar person he had ever encountered, bonded over their newly discovered similarities in forbidden love. At age thirteen, Augusten began deeply intimate romantic relationship with the doctor’s adopted son, who was twenty years his senior. Their love reeked of problems, with Augusten’s boyfriend, Neil’s abusive behavior leading the

rest.
As the years progressed, as did Augusten’s mother’s mentally irrational behavior, he began spending more and more time at the Fitches home, with his own behavior having changed so drastically in such a short time that he was barely recognizable. The kooky doctor’s insistence that he be his own person, in addition to the doctor’s notion that at age thirteen one is capable of fully making their own life choices, made Augusten believe his reluctance to go to school was entirely justifiable. His continual absence was filled with adventures of his daily life, from tearing down the Fitches’ kitchen roof to make a sky light, to falsely being admitted into a mental institution by Dr. Fitch, who shortly after became his legal guardian.
While Augusten’s life began with perfectly combed hair and blue blazers, it quickly shifted to shouting matches resulting with food on the ceiling and lighting cigarettes on the kitchen stove. Oddly enough, Burroughs accounts the latter as being much more logical and as the portion of his life filled with more order.