Girl Interrupted Hero's Journey

Due to her psychosis, many critics believe that Susanna Kaysen needs to be enrolled in a mental institution in order to recover. Coerced to enroll, she does so and then feels trapped in this new environment.
Susanna’s first step of the hero’s journey actually takes place when she was still living in her parents’ house in an uptown part of Massachusetts; this was her ordinary life. Despite the irony, in this ordinary world she struggles with depression, suicidal thoughts and what we later learn is a personality disorder. In her memoir, Susanna doesn’t write much about her life before McLean but instead she focuses on her suicidal thought process: “Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the [suicide] debate. Make a stupid remark—why not kill myself...Even the good got in there. I liked that

movie—maybe I shouldn’t kill myself” (37).

This choice creates irony because while she is describing her ordinary life, the audience would argue otherwise because a life like this is not virtually normal or “ordinary.” James Mangold, director of the film, Girl, Interrupted, does a better job displaying Susanna’s familiar life. He portrays Susanna as timid and awkward during a family gathering, which in my perspective, seems pretty accurate.
The next most pivotal stage in Susanna Kaysen’s hero’s journey is the call to adventure. This is when she first admits herself into McLean mental hospital. This introduction to a new world and and environment is a transition that is not easy for Susanna. Ultimately, the choice was hers to enroll to the mental hospital, but she was heavily encouraged by her psychologist to go. “‘I’ve got a bed for you,’ he said. “It’ll be a rest. Just for a couple weeks, okay?’” (Kaysen 8). Susanna agrees to go at the end of the week, on Friday, but he immediately he snaps back with “No. You go now,” (8). The

psychologists stern demeanor intimidated Susanna and therefore she gave in to his request so willingly. Susanna is not the type to cause raucous, especially since she has a rough idea that this choice may even help her. At her admittance to McLean mental hospital, Susanna begins to show her true colors. She is an impeccable model of Carl Jung’s ideal introvert. She “focuses her energy moves toward the inner world of thoughts and ideas; the world inside of her.” However, due to her suicide attempt and enrollment into a mental institute, every move Susanna made was monitored meticulously. Every activity was now done as a group, and any privacy was completely demolished. Susanna had to get used to continuous company--even while using the bathroom--and “checks” every five minutes. This new lifestyle forced Susanna, a natural introvert, to transform into a extrovert: “energy moves toward the outer world of people places and things.” Regardless, this conversion was not a choice, but an involuntary resultant of a change in environment. This change, wasn’t necessarily for the better, or for the worst, but ultimately it leads to the feeling of entrapment, that Susanna struggles with throughout her hero’s journey, like many other characters in literature.
Susanna then refuses this call by wishing herself out of McLean mental hospital. Being obliged to enroll, she did so, but ultimately regrets doing so due to the way she is being forced to live. Susanna clearly doesn’t like the environment of the mental hospital, which creates a feeling of being trapped, in this new place that she is supposed to call “home.” She describes how “Our double-locked doors, our steel-mesh window screens, our kitchen stocked with plastic knives are locked unless a nurse was with us, our bathroom doors didn’t lock, All this was medium security. Maximum security was another world” (Kaysen 47). This all seemed to bother Susanna and contributed to the trapped feeling that she was experiencing. Looking back she even refers to her admittance as “signing her freedom away,” not even realizing what she was getting herself into. Another factor that allowed Susanna to feel so out of place at the mental hospital was the fact that everyone else there was a “lunatic.” She says with hope, “I knew I wasn’t mad, and that they wouldn’t keep me there, locked up in a loony bin,” (Kaysen 42). Although she has a mental disorder, she wasn’t as crazy as many of the women in the ward of McLean. The main