Running With Scissors Sparknotes

Augsten Burroughs’ “Running with Scissors” leaves the reader questioning if Burroughs is the funniest man alive or just the most psychotic. In Burroughs memoir, his childhood is exemplified by outrageous comedy, which leaves you believing that you are watching a sit-com rather than reading about an actual person’s life. From watching his adopted brother defecate on the living room floor to dating a 34-year-old man at the age of 13, Burroughs memoir appears to be a fantasy which would be virtually impossible to read without his dark sense of humor.
Augsten Burroughs was born Christopher Richter Robinson the youngest of the two sons of his mother, poet Margaret Robison, and his father, John G. Robison who was a professor at the University

of Massachusetts. His parents divorced when he was 12 years old and he was later adopted by his mother’s psychiatrist, this childhood is the main plot for the memoir “Running with Scissors.” The reader is introduced to Burroughs dysfunctional life rather quickly as we are introduced to his mother, a delusional poet, and his father who was “occupied in his role of a highly functional alcoholic professor at the University of Massachusetts.” Being a product of these parents, Burroughs is a flamboyant character who likes to boil his change and shine it with metal polish and only values celebrities and medical doctors. His childhood is defined by memories of his verbally abusive mother and his manipulative father who would go to great lengths to mentally affect his wife. His mother constantly explains to her son that “’ He’d rather suffocate me with his horribly oppressive manipulation and then wait for me to cut my own throat.’” This manipulation becomes too much for his mother to withstand and she hires a psychiatrist who will completely change Burroughs’ life forever, if this is better or worse is up to interpretation.
Dr.

Finch, his mother’s psychiatrist, is characterized by being even more psychotic than his mother as Burroughs questions “‘Your father. That room of his. He doesn’t really… it’s not his Masturbatorium is it?” As Burroughs’ mother’s relationship with her ex-husband becomes more dangerous, Burroughs is abandoned and begins to live with Dr. Finch. Burroughs describes the opulent home he imagines the doctor owns as he says, “I pictured a silver Mercedes 450 SL parked sideways in the crushed clamshell driveway, roof down, M.D. plates glinting in the sun.” He is instead greeted by “a lady hunchback with kinky, grayish, almost purple hair.” Being greeted by Agnes, Dr. Finch’s wife, causes Burroughs to realize he might be stuck in another family that’s more dysfunctional than his own. Burroughs is away from his psychotic mom but now must live with the psychotic Dr. Finch, Agnes, an OCD confined woman named Joranne, the overly sexualized Hope and Natalie, an uncontrollable 6-year-old named Poo, and a 34-year-old Neil Bookman who will have a great impact on Burroughs’ life. Burroughs becomes close with Natalie and Hope by playing with Dr. Finch’s old electroshock therapy machine and remodeling the kitchen but especially close with Neil. Burroughs life has him yearning for freedom and to be normal as he says, “I recognized the people for what they were- normal. I also recognized that I was more like a Finch and less like one of them.” While living with the doctor, Burroughs comes

out as he says, “The fact that I was gay had never been a big deal to me- I’d known all my life.” He also almost agrees to statutory rape as he says, “I also think, I didn’t come here for this.” All these purely psychotic events in the Finch household are used as comedy for Burroughs and emphasizes this almost sit-com like comedy of life.
“Running with Scissors” uses stylistic humor to lighten the mood of these dark situations he experienced in his childhood. Although this humor often makes these unbearable images easier to read, it sometimes causes all these events to just become jokes, taking away the seriousness these events should be taken with.