The main theme of Ned Vizzini’s novel It’s Kind of a Funny Story is depression. It is not however, about being depression in the conventional sense. Rather, it is about how depression doesn’t have to control a person’s life, and how it can be defeated. The theme specifically focuses on living through depression, and coming back from it. This theme is a main part of why the story was written. It’s Kind of a Funny Story was inspired by Ned Vizzini’s brief hospitalization for depression in 2004. Like Craig, he stayed at the clinic for five days, and the day after he was released, he began writing It’s Kind of a Funny Story. The novel takes place in New York present day, and follows the life of Craig Gilmer, a clinically depressed fifteen year …show more content…
Craig is depressed, and is struggling to find meaning and purpose in his life. He can’t sleep, he can barely eat, and he is has difficulty speaking and finishing his thoughts and sentences. After a particularly difficult night, Craig decides to commit suicide, but at the last second stops and calls the suicide hotline instead. After speaking on the hotline, he checks himself into a mental hospital to deal with his depression. While in the hospital, he meets a number of adults suffering from different mental illnesses, and they start to change how he views himself, his choices, his ideas, and his …show more content…
Each part had a different shape and a name (for example, Part 4: Hospital), and was accompanied with a small shape. Altogether these shapes make up the picture on the front cover, of a head with a map inside. This picture is also an important part of the plot of the book. In the story, Craig starts to draw people’s heads with maps inside that describe their personalities. Drawing these maps makes Craig realize how much he loves drawing, and helps him to battle his depression. “‘This’- I pointed at the brain maps- ‘This is something different. This is something I love. So I’d better do it.’” (pg. 415). This quote shows how important drawing and the maps becomes to Craig, and also connects the different parts of the stories. The different shapes for each part come together to make the map inside Craig’s brain, which is also his first brain map. This was really noteworthy to me because of how everything was interconnected and came full circle together. It’s Kind of a Funny Story definitely enhanced my knowledge and understanding of depression. Before reading this novel, I had basic knowledge of what depression is and how it affects people. After reading it, I have a greater grasp of how controlling it can be for a person, and how it can change their lives. My knowledge of what different people experience when going through depression and how they react to it is greatly
This shows the aspect of humor because, he wants to show he can do the impossible and become a world renowned scientist for solving one of man- kinds many ailments. Such as skin ailment and /or paralysis among other aliments he thinks of. He also develops a life under the use and abuse of drugs, crystal meth. He identifies himself with drugs, falling to the drug addict status, which impacts his life on a different setting, further explaining that he felt down after his dealer in drugs fly’s out of the country.
In the end, Norma comes back to Jimmy because the person she lives with is too serious. In “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn’t Flash Red Anymore,” Victor and Adrian talk about the basketball stars on the reservation, hoping that someone on the reservation can resist alcohol and develop his or her basketball skills to be a successful ballplayer. The function of Alexie’s humor shifts throughout his stories. In “A Drug Called Tradition,” Alexie’s humor effectively accomplishes one of his goals by obliging readers to reconsider their concepts, while his humor helps his characters improve their situations in “The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor.” In “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn’t Flash Red Anymore,” humor mitigates the characters’ pain and despair.
Steve Almond’s “Funny is the New Deep” talks of the role that comedy has in our current society, and most certainly, it plays a huge role here. Namely, through what Almond [Aristotle?] calls the “comic impulse”, we as a people can speak of topics that would otherwise make many of uncomfortable. Almond deems the comic impulse as the most surefire way to keep heavy situations from becoming too foreboding. The comic impulse itself stems from our ability and unconscious need to defend and thus contend with the feeling of tragedy. As such, instead of rather forcing out humor, he implies that humor is something that is not consciously forced out from an author, but instead is more of a subconscious entity, coming out on its own. Almond emphasizes
Vizzini, Ned . It's Kind of a Funny Story. New York: Hyperion Paperbacks, 2007. 11, 12, 14-5, 27, 136, 148, 161, 168-9, 199, 444. Print.
The author chooses to write the novel through the eyes of the main character and narrator, Jack. Jack’s perception of the world is confined to an eleven foot square room. His world consists only of the objects in his room and his Ma. Because of his limited amount of knowledge of the outside world the narrator uses personification which allows the reader to see his life through his eyes.
Comedy differs in the mood it approaches and addresses life. It presents situations which deal with common ground of man’s social experience rather than limits of his behaviour – it is not life in the tragic mode, lived at the difficult and perilous limits of the human condition.
Humor is also often used to cushion an underlying pain or sadness. Oftentimes, people use humor as a coping mechanism for survival, therefore it is of no surprise that writers such as Twain, Paulsen, Alexie, and Robbins, incorporate humor in their stories about children of alcoholics. Otherwise, a reading a narrative story about a child of an alcoholic would be quite dark, depressing, and negative. (Lacy, 348) In Sadaris’ “Let It Snow”, he uses humor in his storytelling.
The irony in stories can cross your brain that make you think in a certain way for the stories purpose. The Yellow Wallpaper is covered with irony, the main gist in the story is filled with detailed irony. The irony in the story is that the narrator is ill and her husband is a doctor, he is never referred to as a doctor though. The husband never treats the wife and she does get over her sickness, but when she does the husband faints. In The Story of an Hour a wife is dying of heart disease a quote, “heart disease-of joy that kills”.
This makes the book more appealing for the reader because it is unusual for novels to have visual elements like tables and diagrams. These elements were used to hook in the reader and show aspects of Christopher’s world/thinking process that we may otherwise be unaware of. They give us an insight into Christopher’s mind and show us how different his life is to ours. An example of this is when Christopher draws a map of his neighbourhood that he calls “approximate”. By looking at the map we can see that it is very detailed and the majority of people would say that it was very precise.
After Craig decided he wanted to leave. Initially, Craig is optimistic with staying in the facility; however, over-time he starts to enjoy the area when he makes two friends, Bobby and Noelle. Through the help of these three characters (Dr. Eden, Bobby, and Noelle) Craig can learn to conquer his battle in a different approach. Craig in the movie starts picking up a raw passion with art, he learns that he is good with creating art, and that art soothes him. In the hospital the audience can see that “everyone” goes through ups and downs and goes through phases of depression.
It's Kind of a Funny Story tells the coming-of-age tale about 15-year old Craig, a boy with big eyes, a hesitant smile and a diffident, sensitive demeanor. The teen is beginning to crack under the academic pressure to succeed in fields that he is not interested in at an exclusive public high school for gifted students. Although Craig is fairly intelligent, he feels out of place among the other students. The boy is in a constant state of panic about his future, which makes him prone to fits of stress vomiting. Amid these despondencies, he falls in love with his best friend Aaron's girl Nia.