Yesterday I participated in a discussion on Twitter for LitChat. This was the first time I'd ever done something like this. It was, to say the least, interesting. The subject was mental illness in literature. I wasn't sure the protocol for interacting, so I started out by simply mentioning books I knew that had main characters who were affected by mental illness, or books which were centralised around it.
After several suggestions, the conversation turned to why characters with these disorders are so engaging and memorable.
I ventured a guess that it is because all of us have been touched by mental illness. Meaning, we all know someone who has battled these diseases, if not ourselves. Whether they are trying to battle through depression, struggling with an eating disorder, or working to come to terms with schizophrenia. We have been witnesses to how close minded society is when it comes to these sorts of illnesses.
If we don't see a wound it's hard to come to terms with the sickness.
The books which touch on or centralise around mental health interest us because it is exploring an area so many of us live, but which society treats as taboo.
This is just a fleeting blog post on what was discussed, but I would like to see a light shone on mental illness. So people can understand it and realise how numbing and life changing it is. Not to mention how rampant.
Here are ten books and their links which touch on mental illness:
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
I Know This Much Is True
Hamlet
Girl, Interrupted
Fight Club
Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time
She's Come Undone
The Gargoyle
The Bell Jar
Prozac Nation
4 comments:
I was on the litchat discussion as well. I struggled to express myself in 140 chars. In fact, I'm still not sure I know what I think about the way many writers used mental illness and disorder in fiction.
Clearly there are books that do it well. But there are so many others that just exploit it as a plot device or a justification verging on deus ex machina.
I think this is just too big a debate for me :)
Some books are utter crap at it. I like examples I've given. But then there's others that simply fall short or glorify it by making it sound almost exotic. Bollocks to that.
Like I said on the chat, Lisbeth Salander has been described as paranoid, schizophrenic, and a sociopath. She's also been said to have Asperberger's.
But I don't think the diagnosis matters for the character or the book. It's enough to know she is the product of horrific abuse. Any more detailed analysis is derailed, I think, because the writer used whatever he could find to justify the story and - in particular - her sexual behaviour, which often smacks of authorial wish fulfillment.
Thanks for your smart insights in yesterday's #litchat. I appreciated your posts of novels featuring characters with mental disorders, but this tweet really captured the intention of the topic:
"The truth is, flawed characters are most beautiful, because we see ourselves in them. And can identify."
Hope to see you in #litchat again soon.
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