When starting this book I didn’t know what to expect, as all of our prior group readings related to mental health. What made this story stand out was the fact that it was nonfiction and its standpoint is from someone who lost a loved one to suicide. Our prior books were narrated in such a way that allowed the actual reader to be in the character-narrator’s head and from that point of view we could witness their demise into insanity. We see the constant battle in all of our books, starting with the soul-sucking twins from the Slade House, Aza’s battle with OCD in Turtles All the Way Down, and Esther’s demise into insanity in The Bell Jar. It sure feels like we hit the peak of it all. Most recently, in our last book, The Bell Jar, we are constantly trapped in a one-sided viewpoint of Esther, who wants to commit suicide. But now we enter a new perspective of Kayla, the wife of a pastor, and their struggle leading up to his suicide. This book is called Fear Gone Wild.
When I started reading this book, I could see the love-hate relationship was going to brew inside of me. When I enter the first chapter I see this man (Andrew) and woman (Kayla) and their beautiful relationship that is about to be built. They both came from different situations in their lives and seemed to be madly in love, but that all changes. We go through the depression of Andrew and how Kayla seems to be “handling” it. When I started this book, I felt like it meant a lot to me, as I lost someone to suicide and I thought this would give me answers that I have been questioning for so long. But it did the opposite of that. I grew up Catholic and went to private schools my whole life and I feel this book made the worst of what depression is. Kayla and Andrew’s love seemed to be perfect, almost too perfect. But when Andrew started experiencing episodes of mental illness, Kayla wasn’t supportive but critical, saying, “Andrew, you know that is the most selfish thing you could ever do right?” (Stoecklein 80). She blamed him for feeling the way he does and how he could do this to her and their family.
Her intentions as a wife weren’t pure and there was even a point in the text where she talked about how she thought people with depression were being dramatic and that their feelings were dramatized. She never took his mental illness seriously and even though on page 81 when she states “Why didn’t I take it seriously?” she still never does. She doesn’t listen to her own words about God and apply them to her own situation.
To refer back to Angelina’s blog 2, she brings up the semic code by Kaja Silverman, “represents the major device for thematizing persons, objects, or places” (251). And how this is represented throughout the novel as being bits and pieces of poetry put in throughout the novel. I tend to see that in multiple attempts especially in her inner chapter thoughts where she talks about God. These mini poems either followed an ABAB rhythm format or would follow with a question at the end of each sentence. We see this type of repetition on page 39 when she repeats “I have no idea.” Another time this occurs is on page 26 when she keeps repeating “Maybe” and on page 27 with “you are…”
I tend to struggle in entering into the symbolic codes sometimes, just because when I read I get so into the story I tend to forget about the reading for or what my blog topic is about. Especially with this book, I got so frustrated thinking of ways to save Andrew that I forgot about everything else. I wasn’t submitting to the text and what really amazed me was that my group and I all felt the same way about this. We resisted and somehow got swept into the narrative. Despite all our resistance, we were still hanging on every word and somehow were still reading mimetically.
Just like Angelina, I feel that I read for the semic code and the proairetic code, just because when I’m looking at the heading and reading the title of the book I can see that someone committing suicide is going to appear. But as I read I constantly am turning the page thinking that Andrew is going to die of suicide. But also as I read her story almost like a diary I know that an excerpt from a gospel will come up next. As she does this in every chapter, she tells her story and then refers to the bible.
As I stated prior, I grew up Catholic and even though I don’t attend church and pray like Kayla does I can see a cultural code emerge in this novel. The cultural code stated by Barthes “is a thing that refers to the current cultural or intellectual domain. There are often different meanings in different cultures and this provides more context and meaning to the text and the way we think about them.” In this novel, I would definitely say that the cultural code would be Kayla’s faith and how her faith is the only way she can turn to in times of uncertainty, especially throughout this novel.
I believe what really threw me off was the footnote citations that went throughout the novel. Every time I came across one I felt that I was reading a news article or a dictionary. It made this novel seem less of a novel. “70 percent of pastors do not have someone they consider a close friend.^3”(Stoecklein 64) A lot of this information was fascinating because it was new to me, but it wasn’t something that I could connect to, it just made me feel more separated than I already was.
As I identify the cultural codes in this novel, I can see that religion plays a major part and that being faith forward and wrapped up in the world, in a certain religion ostracizes others, which makes it hard to enter Kayla’s world, as she already closes us out. But another cultural code that Professor Kopp brought to my attention was how Kayla wants to look for the readers she is trying to reach. My group and I might not be the reader she wants to come across to but to her social media followers and her church friends she wants to portray and make it seem that she had no part in what happened to her husband. As professor Kopp said, “ guilt can be defined as a salve we put on ourselves to make it seem/feel alright.” Even though it might not be alright to us, it might be her way of coping with the loss of her husband.
The controlling value is that you must be a good faithful person and rely on it during uncertain times. If you rely on it then this faith will fix all your problems. Throughout the novel, Kayla relies on her faith, continuously leaning on him to see the light at the end of the tunnel. She uses the gospel to show that “she believes” and that she is trying to understand. But can faith create a blinding effect?
Our counter idea is focused on how faith can be blinding because focusing on faith blinds us to other things that are happening around you. This impacted Kayla because as she turns to faith for everything, she starts to come off unreliable/untrustworthy in her intentions. She seems to only be reaching out to certain people with her book, those people believing in faith. She turns so much to faith that when her husband needed help instead of getting him the help he needed she prayed. She believed in faith so much she thought that her prayers would heal him and fix him rather than seeing his pain and helping him. I heard many times “A little prayer goes a long way” but Kayla was too faith forward that her husband needed more than just a prayer, he needed her.
A Reading List By Group 5 
In your blog you mention the semic and proairetic code, there’s something really interesting that you start to talk about regarding these two codes. It’s a cool instance where we can really see these codes working together within the narrative. There is a seme that emerges called “The Wilderness”. I believe it first appears in chapter 3. In this first instance, Kayla talks about the wilderness as it appears in the Bible and what it symbolizes– a place of necessary transformation. As she describes the wilderness in the bible she starts to set up what this section will be for the rest of the novel. And each chapter after this first instance, you will find the heading “The Wilderness” and Kayla will write about and quote from the Bible. She spends the section mostly focusing on religion and sort of likens the passages to her life and Andrew. So as a seme, this section is Kayla’s wilderness, the place where she has to make her necessary transformation as a woman who did not have a husband with these issues, to one that does. To a woman who has a husband to one who doesn’t. This is where Kayla can really tell her part of the story. But then we look at this as part of the proairetic code. After that first instance, and the second just to solidify it, I can make the prediction that each chapter from now on will include this section. I notice a pattern and then make a prediction based on it. I know that Kayla’s writing in the wilderness will be focused on her and passages from the Bible. I know that this will be the place where she will explicitly be discussing passages from the Bible. I know this so well, that I can honestly fully skip these sections knowing what sort of content I skipped over. While the proairetic code isn’t a tool to figure out where to skip reading, I am resistant to this book and I may have used it for that purpose at times during my reading.
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I agree that Kayla’s narrative was questionable in the beginning because she mostly talked about herself and less about Andrew or mental health. There were enlighten advice and statistics for mental health, but not enough about Andrew. I understood that it was her story, and she was sharing about her experience with her husband, and that was fine, but I wanted to know about Andrew. It was hard reading about how she handled Andrew’s depression, though could I blame her? As it was a challenging position to be in, then I remembered she has a bachelor’s in psychology. Although it was not her fault, she could have done better. I don’t think Kayla was an awful person, but she relied on faith too much. As my group and I discussed that we were not the right demographics for this book as we are not very religious. But it was for people in her church and religious people in general, which is fine.
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Hello Sierra
She does seem to rely on faith way too much throughout the story. There were several moments where Andrew was in pain and clearly needed help and all she could provide to him were thoughts and prayers. I kind of feel wrong for saying this, but its like she can’t really understand the deeper meaning in human interactions. She doesn’t seem to understand the affects her actions had on Andrew and the affects of writing this novel of hers. Its like she clings to her faith to solve those problems for her and because of that, Andrew ended up committing suicide. What I find most baffling though is how Kayla has a degree in psychology and has some very strange opinions on people with mental illness. I mean, I see the point that turning to faith is one way of trying to cope with a mental illness and moving on but using it as an emotional crutch is a problem. She needed to be there for him and she just couldn’t give him what he needed. Not only because of how she put so much focus into her faith, but also because she put a lot of focus on herself.
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