Paige Stressman-AB

In my How Writers Read course with Professor Kopp, we read four books over the fall semester. So imagine a Writing Arts student getting anxious about reading. I was one of those students who liked to read but read a few selections, such as I read Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson ten times, or I stuck to reading short stories on Wattpad, a self-publishing website where anyone could be a writer. I read what I already knew because that was comfortable for me. I picked the romantic stories that were a page long because it gave me butterflies, which felt good. It was hard for me to read new books because I get anxious when I do not know what will happen. For example, when I began to read Speak in my freshman year of high school, I could tell that the main character, Melinda, had likely experienced something awful before the time of her narrating her story. Instead of discovering what had happened to her by reading the narrative. I rushed over to Wikipedia and read the plot there. I allowed myself to be trapped by anxiety as I fell into the addiction of reading ahead, reading the book online, or skipping scenes in a movie to get to one in particular. Even on Wattpad, I felt so invested in one book that I read it all night or lost sleep because that was all my mind could think about. 

Reading ought to be enjoyable, but in this way, I have made it more of a burden to be so careful with selecting stories that would not bring me to experience the anxiety I dreaded. So the question for me to ask is: how do I break this pattern? How can I grow as a reader when I tended to avoid triggering the anxiety that drives me to find out how the narrative ends. The problem was that I knew how it ended, and I stopped reading. What is going on here is that I most often read mimetically. I read for the imitation of reality in the narratives I read, where my bodily sensations and emotions correspond to what the narrator or protagonist experiences. It seems like I didn’t read for the thematic or synthetic dimensions of the narrative. 

What was at stake for me was I wanted to find ways to cope with my anxiety better as I read. I wondered if reading thematically, reading for the ideas expressed in the narrative, or synthetically, reading for the textual elements, the “writing itself,” that tells the story, would help my anxiety. Before the class, I thought I was too sensitive, too empathic. That is, I often take on the emotions of the main character and feel them as if they were my own. However, I had a breakthrough as I realized I could read thematically or synthetically since I practiced reading a new way. 

First, I want to talk about The Bell Jar tells the story of a young woman, Esther Greenwood, who suffers a mental breakdown while striving to find her way in the adult world while coping with the stigma of mental illness and the psychiatric treatments that appeared to make her condition even worse.

The narrative begins with Esther having won a summer internship for Ladies’ Day magazine in New York City. She has a passion for writing, and her boss, Jay Cee, mentors her. However, Esther struggles with depression while comparing her past to the present, contrasting her memories of her relationship with Buddy Willard, who she thought would be her future husband. The struggles she faces in the present. Throughout the book, readers saw Esther confronting unformed prejudices concerning virginity, marriage, and kids. These prejudices clashed against the current reality and led to her suffering. What I meant by that was how her mother and Buddy’s mom often preached about men and women saving their virginities until marriage, and Esther discovered that this is not quite the case in actual life. Buddy’s infidelity shattered this naive point of view. 

However, Esther seemed to be on a spiral as she tried to form her own opinions, such as: when she was thinking about the type of man to lose her virginity to, she said,

“the more I thought about it the better I liked the idea of being seduced by a simultaneous interpreter in New York City…” and Esther said this after she learned Buddy had an affair with a waitress, and that made her think how men and women were different on who could sleep around and who couldn’t. “

(80)

Esther’s way of thinking correlated with the premise of the book. In his book Story, chapter 6, “Structure and Meaning” Robert McKee defines the premise of a story to be “ the idea that inspires the writers’ desire to create a story”: a question that an author wanted to answer by writing a book about it (112). I noticed the pressure felt about saving her virginity until marriage. Why was it such a big deal? I began to think that the premise was, what if a girl is too focused on her virginity? Still, I knew that the novel was not only about that, and there was much to unpack. I looked back at my notes and realized that I added how Esther would judge others’ appearance. For example, in chapter one, Esther went to a club with her friend, Doreen, and met two men, Lenny and Frankie. Frankie asked Esther to dance, and she said,

“The thought of dancing with that little runt in his orange suede elevator shoes and mingy T-shirt and droopy blue shorts coat made me laugh. If there’s anything I look down on, it’s a man with a blue outfit. Black or gray, or brown, even. Blue just makes me laugh.  ‘I’m not in the mood.’ I said coldly…”.

(11-12)

Does that lead me to the second premise of what if a depressed young woman judges others? Esther, to me, seemed a little judgmental; however, my group leader, Angelina, and I examined the other subject matter that happened in the book. We found common ground on the social norms and how that created a lot of pressure for Esther. You might be wondering what kind of pressure she dealt with, well, there was views of marriage and virginity and the freedom of sex in the novel, and Esther had opposite ideas about them. In the fifties, which was the decade that the pressure of being a perfect woman meant to save your virginity until marriage, marry well, and have kids. 

Esther described the other girls, who were only in NYC to find a man and marry, as, “…and they were all going to posh secretarial schools like Katy Gibbs, where they had to wear hats and stockings and gloves to class, or they had just graduated from places like Katy Gibbs and were secretaries to executives and junior executives and simply hanging around in New York waiting to get married to some career man or other…” (Plath 4).

Esther was there to learn about writing, and she was keen on following the rules that the other young girls were. Even when proposed by Buddy Willard, a boy she was steady with but grown to hate, she said, 

“ ‘I’m never going to get married.’ ‘You’re crazy.’ Buddy brightened, ‘You’ll change your mind.’ ‘No. My mind’s made up.’ ”

(93)

So, Angelina and I came up with the premise being, what if trying to be the ‘perfect woman’ causes a psychotic break? But now, I wonder if it’s, what if trying to be ‘normal’ causes you to be abnormal?

With the premise figured out, we had to identify the controlling idea. Mckee defined that as something “may be expressed in a single sentence describing how and why life changes from one condition of existence at the beginning to another at the end” (115). 

What would the controlling idea be in The Bell Jar? It could be aspiring to be normal will cause to feel a part of something. To go along with the controlling idea. We would have to find a counter controlling idea, which has a negative outlook of the premise. I believed it to be, being normal will only make you feel trapped, and that will make you suffer. 

Here was how the ideas happened in The Bell Jar. In chapter six, Buddy told Esther he lost his virginity over the summer with a waitress. Esther realized that Buddy and the waitress had sex about thirty times, and she felt betrayed by him. When they were going steady, Esther said, “he kissed me and said I must go out with lots of boys, he made me feel I was much more sexy and experienced than he was and that everything he did like hugging and kissing and petting was simply what I made him feel like doing out of blue, he couldn’t help it and didn’t know how it came about” (70). The controlling idea at play here as Esther felt normal because Buddy wanted her, and she started to find her place was with Buddy. 

Esther felt sexy, perfect, and valuable by Buddy’s advances, yet to have him snatch it from underneath her feet as Buddy revealed he was not pure. Although, he, and his mother, preached that men and women should keep their virginity until marriage. Esther realized he was a hypocrite and said, “What I couldn’t stand was Buddy pretending I was so sexy and he was so pure when all this time he’s been having an affair with that tarty waitress and must have felt like laughing in my face” (71). That was when the counter idea came in as Esther felt inadequate, for she was still a virgin. 

But thanks to Buddy, Esther finds power in the freedom of sex by getting a diaphragm implanted, a method of birth control. Esther thinks to herself, “I am climbing to freedom, freedom from fear, freedom from marrying the wrong person, like Buddy Willard, just because of sex…” (Plath 223). Here, that was the controlling idea as Esther tried to be perfect, but to only find her way to accomplish those feelings of normal again. She found her place in the world of an independent woman that was free to choose who to sleep with by having birth control. Instead of being concerned about being pure, she was able to feel sexy without a man. 

Notice the difference between controlling and counter ideas? With the control, Esther felt freedom when she got the diaphragm. She felt less pressure to choose who to sleep with and not wait for marriage, as Esther may have regretted picking the wrong husband. The controlling idea is about trying to follow ideals set by others. Yet, only for you to be abnormal by forming your opinions, and that led Esther to find her path in the world. The counter had Esther feeling low about herself. It was she who compared herself to Buddy, who was free to sleep around. But Esther, being a woman, was not allowed. If Esther did, then she would be called a slut. As in a perfect world, a woman would wait.

To show how the ideas would look throughout the novel, the following is a narrative value graph, which has critical moments from the book to show the different charges of the text move between positive and negative.

To learn about the genre of the book and intertextual codes, which propped me to examine the way Esther tried to find the truth behind saving your virginity until marriage. A code that deals with finding the truth is the hermeneutic code.

Silverman defined this as “the desire for closure and ‘truth.’ However, this code provides not only the agency whereby a mystery is first suggested and later resolved but several mechanisms for delaying our access to the desired information,”

(257)

That correlates with Esther wanting to know her place and if losing your virginity before marriage is wrong. 

She recalled when her mother sent her an article about purity, Esther said, “Now the one thing this article didn’t seem to me to consider was how a girl felt. It might be nice to be pure and then marry a pure man, but what if he suddenly confessed he wasn’t pure after we were married, the way Buddy Willard had? I couldn’t stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not.” There Esther said if she could not find a pure man when he was 21, she would not be pure herself (81).

Another occasion was when she told her therapist, Dr. Nolan, a woman, about the article, and she said, “Doctor Nolan waited for until I was finished. Then she burst out laughing. “Propaganda!” she said…” (222). After their conversation, Esther got a diaphragm with the help of Nolan. 

But there’s an element known as “jamming” in hermeneutic code, and it was described as “an acknowledgment of the apparent failure of the hermeneutic activity, usually because of the exhaustion of all available resources (the death of a key witness, the destruction of vital evidence, someone’s stubborn refusal to talk, etc.), and is intended to induce in the reader a frenzy of epistemophilia,” (Silverman 261). As I read about jamming, I asked myself what the word ‘epistemophilia’. I looked it up, and Merriam-Webster defined it as, “the love of knowledge’ (1). That reminded me of the spiral Esther went on. Esther found out she could not attend the summer writing class she wanted to get in (114). Afterward, she had a hard time writing and reading, so it seemed that Esther struggled to do the things she loved, and it became dangerous. 

For example, Esther asked Teresa, who was the family’s doctor, for more sleeping pills, she said, “ ‘I can’t sleep. I can’t read.’ I tried to speak in a cool, calm way, but the zombie rose up in my throat and choked me off. I turned my hand’s palm up.” (126). As you tell, Esther was struggling during that time as she was not able to do what she loved, which was learning. So, with that in mind, it seems that her mental health and her desire to learn are immensely intertwined with one another.

Brendan’s focused on the semic code, which Kaja Silverman described in “Re-Writing the Classic Text” as “always operates in close conjunction with cultural codes. Indeed, it is to a large degree an adjunct code, defining person and place in ideologically symptomatic ways” (Silverman, 253). That matches well with her declining mental state for Esther’s thoughts were in a dark place for the majority of the book. I would like to add that the code could have been saying about her perception of marriage, kids, and virginity. Esther had different views about those three social expectations placed on women.

I’ve discussed the pressure that Esther felt by the whole stigma of virginity and marriage. But for the third blog, Angelina brought up the possibility that Esther was confused about her sexuality. I found that to be intriguing to talk about since it was the 50s when the story was taking place, and it was hard for the LGBTQ+ community to feel included and safe in that period. 

Although I see where Angelina got the idea for that, I remembered a scene where Esther got DeeDee and Joan in bed together, in a non-sexual way. Esther said,

“ ‘I don’t see what women see in other women,’ I told Doctor Nolan in my interview that noon. ‘What does a woman see in a woman that she can’t see in a man?’

 Doctor Nolan paused. Then she said, ‘Tenderness.’ That shut me up.”

(219).

It could be that Esther was confused or blocking her true feelings, but I believe it was Esther just admiring independent women. It seems the way that men have treated her affected how she viewed them. For example, there was a difference in how Esther described her friend Doreen that she met in NYC, Esther said, “She was wearing a strapless white lace dress zipped up over a snug corset affair that curved her at the middle and bulged her out again spectacularly above and below, and her skin had a bronzy polish under the pale dusting powder” (7). 

Now compare how she portrayed Doreen to Lenny, as Esther said, “had a big, wide, white toothpaste-ad smile,”(8). Esther seemed to represent the men with a lot of imagery or imagination, but she described Doreen as a Greek sculpture. She even compares Doreen to Buddy as,

“But he didn’t have one speck of intuition. Doreen had intuition”

(7).

Perhaps, the men around her disappointed her, and she found comfort in the women around her. It reminded me of the symbolic code, which is binary opposites. Silverman described it as, “unresolvable oppositions. The cultural codes, which are extremely numerous and heterogeneous, to a very large degree, subsume all the other categories…” (241). Think of it as women vs. men, or for Esther, it could be Esther vs. Buddy, Esther vs. Dr. Gordon, and Esther vs. Marco. 

The men in life brought her down as often he made her doubt herself, mostly Buddy. As he called poetry dust, said she would forget about writing after she has kids, and called her crazy when she turned down his marriage proposal. 

That goes with cultural codes, as Silverman explained that “cultural codes function to not only organize but to naturalize that field- to make it seem timeless and inevitable” (274). It’s normal for men to make women doubt themselves like how Buddy did, and her first psychologist, Dr. Gordon, who didn’t pay attention, and Esther called him conceited (129). As I said before about Esther trying to fit in, perhaps she talked about independent women better than men because she wants to be like them.

Angelina presented a network of controlling values for The Bell Jar, which is composed of a controlling and counter value with their own positively charged purpose and negatively charged context. She believed, “the context of controlling value was, distinguishing yourself from others will lead to suffering and loneliness, and its corresponding purpose, suppress your thoughts and conform to others’ expectations in order to be fulfilled in life”. Esther often hides her true feelings to help herself fit in. 

But what if the context was about being perfect, as talked about in my blog? Would it still fit? Let’s try, so the context would be, letting your imperfections out to the world will guess you to be an outcast, and the purpose would be, being perfect will make you happy and fit into the mold that society had created for you. Would that work? 

Well, Angelina came up with again, she wrote,

“the context here presents itself as, Operating within an imposed set of expectations will destroy you, and the corresponding purpose is, Remove all inhibitions around being different and you will be able to lead a fulfilling life.”

(5)

I agree with that, would add that it could be changed to be to where the context was, squeezing yourself to be in that perfect mold will crush you, and the purpose would be, breaking that mold will set you free. Both of our contexts and purposes have the same ideas but are written differently. You can see how it would fit, for Esther as she tried to fit in, and it almost crushed her, but she broke the mold by turning Buddy’s proposal and getting a diaphragm. 

With the rhetoric of narrative, in Sierra’s blog, she used the same terms I’m using. However, I will be making my argument and evidence to talk about Esther’s narration of her story started as if she was a reliable reader in the first chapter. It got hard to tell what was present time as Esther recollected her memories.

For example, I picked a scene where Esther pretended to be an orphan named Elly Higginbottom from Chicago while on a date with a sailor. But she freaked out when she thought she saw Buddy’s mom, and it was only a random lady, Esther, who said,

“The woman approached and passed by without a look or a nod, and of course it wasn’t Mrs. Willard. Mrs. Willard was at her cottage in the Adirondacks.

I fixed the woman’s receding back with a vengeful stare. 

‘Say, Elly…’

‘I thought it was somebody I knew,’ I said, ‘Some blasted lady from this orphan home in Chicago.’

The sailor put his arm around me again.

‘You mean you got no mom or dad, Elly?’

‘No.’ I let out a tear that seemed ready. It made a little hit track down my cheek.

‘Say, Elly, don’t cry. This lady, as she means to you?’

‘She was…she was awful!’”

(132-134)

Strange how she lied to someone and pretended to be a whole another person. A term used in class is ‘inauthentic resident reader,’ which Professor Kopp defined as someone resistant to the narrative, meaning a reader will not submit to it but will question it. 

I flipped to that type of reader as before I was a capable reader, which James Seitz defined it in “A Rhetoric of Reading” as, “who not only has the ability to ‘follow’ the text but also the ability to jump ahead of it” (146). A reader obeys the text without doubting the narration. To me, it seemed that submitting to the text, in the beginning, because there is no reason not to. I was a capable reader by I believed the book would end with Esther committing suicide, or it would be in the middle of the book. Still, as she went back and forth from her memories to the present time with her being home for the summer or at the ward, I questioned if Esther was a likable narrator. Therefore, that made me become an inauthentic resident reader as it was hard getting her story.

The narration style of Esther for Sierra had an interesting thought, which I agree with as she said that Esther was a narrative audience, which Peter J. Rabinowitz explained in “Truth in Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences” as “[an audience that] believes the narrator, accepts his judgments, sympathizes with his plight, laughs at his jokes even when they are bad” (134). Suggesting that we know Esther was not the most reliable narrator or perfect. However, readers can still find her to be funny or entertaining. As an inauthentic resident reader, I read what she said about Buddy carefully, as I felt her frustration. To me, it was as if Esther was one of my friends ‘spilling the tea’ on a guy she used to like but for him to only disappoint her. 

Though Esther was not a reliable narrator, she admitted, in a way, who she was as, towards the end of the story, she said, “How did I know that someday . . . the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?”(Plath 241). I perceived that Esther accepted her depression and knows it will never go away, but be with her forever. 

To summarize, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath was a story of a young woman named Esther Greenwood, who was battling depression. All the while trying to thrive in the adult world that she recently enter. The book is packed full of codes and narration styles that people could argue about for years. The book was memorable to me as I learned how what my group members took from it. 

Throughout the semester, I learned that I was able to read outside the comfort of mimesis. To quote from Professor Kopp’s website, “to reflect on your growth during the semester, highlighting and narrating key moments of developing your reading practices and roles in conversation with the methodological texts, class discussions, and your selected readings, “meaning to examine my role in the class and the accomplishments I had with myself as a reader and a writer (1). I was able to read thematically or synthetically as I don’t take the main character’s emotion like I used to. It is not 100% effective, but I feel it was a bearable amount of emotion. I read stories about serious issues such as mental health, suicide, and assault. I did not read the plot online before I read any of those books, okay I almost did for Slade House, but I got myself and didn’t. 

I wasn’t expecting to break my habit of spoiling the story for myself and being less anxious. I am excited to read more outside of my box and read new stories! I grew to appreciate the narrative as I didn’t spoil the ending for myself, and I don’t need to anymore. I felt the chains that I placed on myself broke, and I’m finally able to read stories without the anxiety of not knowing the stories ending, and feeling the emotions of the main character to the extreme. I can read without any stress because I pushed myself not to read any of the story plots online, but I read the book to know the ending. 

It’s funny to look back at how I was nervous taking How Writers Read because I know reading was a struggle for me. But looking back on it, I can see that this class was what I needed to be a better reader, and it opened my eyes to the type of reader I was. As I said previously, I thought I was too sensitive or empathic. That was why I was strict on what to read or not as specific topics could trigger me, and I felt trapped in a way as I was not in control. It was my anxiety that controlled me like I was a puppet. 

I learned that my read for was mimetically, and it’s okay for me to read that why. But, it’s okay to read in different ways, as I read thematically or synthetically. My reading has helped me be better when reading new books as I control my anxiety now, and it’s not the other way around anymore. 

Reference

1. Published by asakkestad View all posts by asakkestad, Asakkestad, P., Asakkestad, Asakkestad, V., 5, P., Says:, P., . . . (required), N. (2020, November 05). The Power of the Cultural Codes and Controlling Values. Retrieved December 22, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/11/05/the-power-of-the-cultural-codes-and-controlling-values/
2. Published by mooney67rowan View all posts by mooney67rowan, Mooney67rowan, P., Mooney67rowan, Mooney67rowan, V., 30, P., Says:, P., . . . (required), N. (2020, October 29). Trying to Scream in the Void. Retrieved December 22, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/29/trying-to-scream-in-the-void/
3. Published by paigestressman View all posts by paigestressman, Paigestressman, P., Paigestressman, Paigestressman, V., 27, S., Says:, S., . . . (required), N. (2020, October 27). To Be Perfect or Not To Be That Is The Question. Retrieved December 22, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/27/to-be-perfect-or-not-to-be-that-is-the-question/
4. Published by Sierra Lombardo View all posts by Sierra Lombardo, Lombardo, P., Lombardo, S., View all posts by Sierra Lombardo, 8, A., Says:, A., . . . (required), N. (2020, November 08). The Fig Tree and The Bell Jar. Retrieved December 22, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/11/08/the-fig-tree-and-the-bell-jar/
5. Butler, Robert Olen., and Janet Burroway. “Cinema of the Mind.” From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction. New York: Grove, 2005. 63-84.
6. Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces.. Second ed. Princeton: University Press, 1972.
7. ​___. “The Impact of Science on Myth.” Myths to Live By. New York: Penguin Press, 1972.
8. Culler, Jonathan. “Story and Discourse in the Analysis of Narrative.” The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Ithaca: Cornell U.P., 1981.
9. Gallop, Jane. “The Ethics of Reading: Close Encounters.” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (Fall, 2000): 7-17. 
10. Jensen, Michael. “Integrity: Without it, Nothing Works.” Rotman Magazine (Fall 2009): 16-20.
11. Mamet, David. “Countercultural Architecture and Dramatic Structure.” On Directing Film. New York: Viking, 1991. 57-66. ​
12. McKee, Robert. “Structure and Meaning.” Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: Regan, 1997. 110-131. 
13. Phelan, James. “Introduction.” Living to Tell About It: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.
14. Porter, James. “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.” Rhetoric Review​. 5.1 (1986): 34-47.
15. Rabinowitz, Peter. “Truth In Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences.” Critical Inquiry. 4.1 (1977): 121-141. 
16. Seitz, James E. “A Rhetoric of Reading.” Rebirth of Rhetoric: Essays in Language, Culture, and Education. By Richard Andrews. London: Routledge, 1992. 141-55. 
17. Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford UP, 1983.
18. Published by asakkestad View all posts by asakkestad, Asakkestad, P., Asakkestad, Asakkestad, V., 15, P., Says:, P., . . . (required), N. (2020, November 15). Complications in the Semic Code. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/complications-in-the-semic-code/
19. Published by asakkestad View all posts by asakkestad, Asakkestad, P., Asakkestad, Asakkestad, V., 22, P., Says:, P., . . . (required), N. (2020, October 22). The Self Among Audiences. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/22/the-self-among-audiences/
20. Published by asakkestad View all posts by asakkestad, Asakkestad, P., Asakkestad, Asakkestad, V., 29, P., Says:, P., . . . (required), N. (2020, October 02). Beginning to Open Doors in Slade House. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/09/29/beginning-to-open-doors-in-slade-house/
21. Published by asakkestad View all posts by asakkestad, Asakkestad, P., Asakkestad, Asakkestad, V., 5, P., Says:, P., . . . (required), N. (2020, November 05). The Power of the Cultural Codes and Controlling Values. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/11/05/the-power-of-the-cultural-codes-and-controlling-values/
22. Published by mooney67rowan View all posts by mooney67rowan, Mooney67rowan, P., Mooney67rowan, Mooney67rowan, V., 10, P., Says:, P., . . . (required), N. (2020, November 10). Good Intentions Are Not Enough. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/11/10/good-intentions-are-not-enough/
23. Published by mooney67rowan View all posts by mooney67rowan, Mooney67rowan, P., Mooney67rowan, Mooney67rowan, V., 20, P., Says:, P., . . . (required), N. (2020, October 20). Code Behind Free Will. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/20/code-behind-free-will/
24. Published by mooney67rowan View all posts by mooney67rowan, Mooney67rowan, P., Mooney67rowan, Mooney67rowan, V., 30, P., Says:, P., . . . (required), N. (2020, October 29). Trying to Scream in the Void. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/29/trying-to-scream-in-the-void/
25. Published by mooney67rowan View all posts by mooney67rowan, Mooney67rowan, P., Mooney67rowan, Mooney67rowan, V., 8, P., Says:, P., . . . (required), N. (2020, October 08). Temptations of the Reader. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/08/temptations-of-the-reader/
26. Published by paigestressman View all posts by paigestressman, Paigestressman, P., Paigestressman, Paigestressman, V., 16, A., Says:, A., . . . (required), N. (2020, October 15). To Know Leads To Danger. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/15/to-know-leads-to-danger/
27. Published by paigestressman View all posts by paigestressman, Paigestressman, P., Paigestressman, Paigestressman, V., 25, A., Says:, A., . . . (required), N. (2020, November 24). When Good Intentions Are Ignorant. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/11/24/when-good-intentions-are-ignorant/
28. Published by paigestressman View all posts by paigestressman, Paigestressman, P., Paigestressman, Paigestressman, V., 27, S., Says:, S., . . . (required), N. (2020, October 27). To Be Perfect or Not To Be That Is The Question. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/27/to-be-perfect-or-not-to-be-that-is-the-question/
29. Published by paigestressman View all posts by paigestressman, Paigestressman, P., Paigestressman, Paigestressman, V., 8, S., Says:, S., . . . (required), N. (2020, October 06). A Battle of Wit and The Sexes! Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/05/a-battle-of-wit-and-the-sexes/
30. Published by Sierra Lombardo View all posts by Sierra Lombardo, Lombardo, P., Lombardo, S., View all posts by Sierra Lombardo, 1, M., Says:, M., . . . (required), N. (2020, October 01). Mysterious Case of Ivy and Fox Pins! Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/01/mysterious-case-of-ivy-and-fox-pins/
31. Published by Sierra Lombardo View all posts by Sierra Lombardo, Lombardo, P., Lombardo, S., View all posts by Sierra Lombardo, 14, P., Says:, P., . . . (required), N. (2020, October 15). All the Way Down. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/14/all-the-way-down/
32. Published by Sierra Lombardo View all posts by Sierra Lombardo, Lombardo, P., Lombardo, S., View all posts by Sierra Lombardo, 20, A., Says:, A., . . . (required), N. (2020, November 19). Codes of Faith. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/11/19/codes-of-faith/
33. Published by Sierra Lombardo View all posts by Sierra Lombardo, Lombardo, P., Lombardo, S., View all posts by Sierra Lombardo, 8, A., Says:, A., . . . (required), N. (2020, November 08). The Fig Tree and The Bell Jar. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/11/08/the-fig-tree-and-the-bell-jar/

Brendan Mooney-AB

As someone who writes for a hobby myself, I was rather curious about this class right from the beginning. I figured that writers read differently from a normal audience that wouldn’t write. I look at books at a rather specific way myself, I tend to look at the techniques the writer uses to pour their thoughts onto the page. I try to investigate the symbolism and the themes, trying to get an idea of how they’re executed so that I can see if I can one day try a similar technique for my own work. I am happy to see that I still learned a lot from this course along with my fellow reading group members. Though we did have a strange situation where our reading group leader acted as, well the reading group leader, but also as a member of the group as other students left the class by the time we were starting to read these books. Luckily however, we were able to pull through and acquire four books to read for the class instead of having to divide up into other groups.If there was a certain topic that was mostly analyzed for the four books that my group read for the class, it would be mental health. Following Slade House, Turtles All the Way Down, and The Bell Jar, we had to read Fear Gone Wild: A Story of Mental Illness, Suicide, and Hope Through Loss by Kayla Stoecklein. All these books had a different kind of contribution to make as we were looking over the topic of mental health. With Slade House, we got to see how a character’s mental state can be used against them in a fictional setting of two soul-sucking twins. Turtles All the Way Down showed us the struggles of what it is like to live with even a not so damaging form of mental illness; it also showed us how someone struggling can still get a lot done despite the additional obstacles in their path. The Bell Jar showed us what it feels like to be trapped with the mental illness, how much harm the struggle can cause someone and how it can correlate in real life with the author. Despite all that we had been through already in the semester, and despite the grueling angst we had already dealt with, we were still not prepared for Fear Gone Wild.

Reading For:

Fear Gone Wild follows the story of the author, Kayla Stoecklein and her relationship with her husband. She spends a lot of time at the beginning of the book describing how she believed that they were the perfect couple and it was all just sunshine and rainbows. “good. Very good. I had it all. The man, the kids, the beautiful home, and even the mom car. My future was full of vibrant colors, grand adventures, and wonderful purpose—until it wasn’t. When fear crept into our home, it dimmed the lights and swiftly spread like wildfire. Our peaceful home, our predictable life, our hopeful future, all set ablaze by mental illness” (Stoecklein, 01). Obviously, it would eventually come to the part where her husband, Andrew, is diagnosed with Depression and the reader gets to see the disbelief in Stoecklein with her initial reaction. She would proceed to describe how she would try to turn to religion for a solution on how to deal with the situation. There are several instances where she cites quotes from the bible to make the scriptures relevant to her and Andrew’s predicament. Their relationship would degrade over time as she depends on religion too much as her husband is in pain. Everything would come crashing down as Andrew would eventually commit suicide and Stoecklein has no choice but to find a way to move on. She had decided that writing her book and sharing her husband’s story was the best way to do that.

Quizzical man raising eyebrow, portrait

When first being introduced to this book, we as a reading group had mixed feelings about it. It was a story about a wife grieving the loss of her husband and trying to find a way to heal. But there were times where we were not sympathetic towards her. None of us experienced the loss of a spouse, so this could be simply us being insensitive. McKee has a lot to say in that regard, especially in his chapter”Structure and Meaning. He says “Aristotle approached the question of the story and meaning in this way. Why is it, he asked, when we see a dead body in the street, we have one reaction, but when we read death in Homer, or see it in the theatre, we have another?” We as the readers of Stoecklein’s book are not witnessing the suicide of Andrew, we are simply reading about it in a written recreation of the events that played out. We could be expected to give the reaction as we would if we were to see a dead body out in the street, but instead we are giving the reaction as if we are witnessing death in a theatre; because of that, we would be showing less sympathy towards Stoecklein, and Andrew as a whole and that could easily be affecting us. 

After all, by this point, we had already read the story of a couple of soul-sucking twins that killed people over the course of several decades. It is not the first time we would have read about death in the semester and it could simply be us being desensitized to the entire notion. As McKee would say it: “Because in life idea and emotion come separately. Mind and passions resolve in different spheres of our humanity, rarely coordinated, usually at odds.” It would be easy to dismiss our unsympathetic reaction towards the book as this, but just isn’t that simple. We as the group had several discussions about this book and all agreed that we had all felt bad for Andrew and his situation. 

However, at the same time, we did not have that same sympathy for Stoecklein. We did feel bad in the sense that she lost her husband to suicide and is trying to move on. However, the idea that she would write a book about his death and earn a profit from it left a poor taste in our mouths. We felt that it was more exploitive than how we originally saw the book.  It was after these discussions where we started to become more of the insecure resistant readers than anything. We couldn’t help but question the motives of Stoecklein as she went further on with her story. 

To her credit, with the way she wrote the story, she convinced us that the events she wrote about were honest depictions of what had taken place. That mostly has to do with the fact that we were distasteful towards how she would treat Andrew while he had the mental illness. “But we lost the days of predictability when the panic attacks started and now depression? […] I hardly recognized him” (Stoecklein, 42). When he was first diagnosed, she was in disbelief that not only was the man with depression her husband, but she couldn’t even recognize the man as they sat next to each other in the car.

There were several instances where Andrew would be in great emotional pain and would clearly have needed her comfort and Stoecklein just had completely dismissive reactions and simply prayed to God silently hoping it would all end. “‘What do you mean a ‘creature’? Andrew, what are you talking about? There isn’t anything in the shower. You were the only one in here; I don’t understand.’ He started crying again and shaking. I wasn’t helping. I was making it worse. So I did the only thing I knew to do—I prayed. ‘God, I don’t know what’s going on, but I pray your presence would overwhelm this room right now. Whatever Andrew saw, I pray in the name of Jesus for it to leave; it has no power here. In Jesus’ mighty name, amen’” (Stoecklein, 72). In a grimmer sense, it did end, just not in the way she would have wanted. However, the story doesn’t end with Andrew’s suicide, that is simply the climax, she tries to describe how she heals to move on and turns more towards religion. By this point, we as a group were tired of how dependent she was on religion and hoped that Andrew’s suicide would have been a wake-up call. However, that never happened, and we were once again leaving the book with a bitter taste.

Form & Genre:

The way that Stoecklein treats her husband Andrew while he is struggling with his mental illness is shocking to say the least. One of the reasons why she wrote this book was to spread the awareness of depression, as well as spreading the awareness of a way to cope with it. For Stoecklein, she firmly believes that turning towards religion is a legitimate way to make one’s own mental health easier, and to help ease the pain of being trapped in one’s own negative thoughts and self-hatred. McKee mentions the goal of the writer in his chapter, “Structure and Meaning” “The audience must not just understand; it must believe. You want the world to leave your story convinced that yours is a truthful metaphor to life. And the means by which you bring the audience to your point of view resides in the very design you give your telling.” To apply this to Stoecklein and her book, she obviously wants the audience to believe that religion is a good way to deal with depression. She is supposed to use her writing to convince the audience that Christianity is a good idea for someone with depression to use in order to treat themselves to recover.

It is easy for her to make herself seem good before opening the text, that much is true. When looking at her little biography in the book, we as the group realized that she had a Bachelor’s in psychology. With that in mind, one might expect to receive a more educated approach about the way she would react towards her husband. We were also expecting useful insights on mental health in general and how religion can be used as an anchor to help one heal and treat themselves as a solution if they couldn’t find anything else. In a sense, we as the audience were tricked by her outward appearance when looking at this book at first. We were approaching this book, expecting to see a psychologist explain how religion can be used as a tool to help treat a patient, and to help them get involved in self-improvement. That was not at all what we had received when reading from this book.

It could have been an interesting take on mental illness given that it was coming from the perspective of someone who does not struggle with it herself. As over the course of the semester, the books that we’ve read when it came to the topic of mental illness, it would come from the perspective of someone struggling with a specific mental illness showing what life is like to live with that diagnosis. This was going to be a different perspective, and presumably an educated one at that. However, instead we got the perspective of someone who stubbornly clings to religion as her husband suffers, puts in the bare minimum of effort to help him and is shocked that it wasn’t enough to save him. Not only that, but once again, she is making money from his death by writing about his story.

Intertextual Codes:

There were a lot of moments when Stoecklein would ask rhetorical questions that weren’t addressed to anyone at all. “The word suicide has become a taboo in our society. Instead of talking about it openly and freely, it is something we keep private and tucked away. Why is there so much shame and fear surrounding suicide? And what can we do to change it?” (Stoecklein, 90). She isn’t necessarily breaking the fourth wall and asking the audience a question, rather she is posing a question to get a better look at her perspective.

These kinds of questions mostly appear either during or after an interaction she has had with Andrew in the story, mostly during the pivotal events that show both of their characters. “But how do we know whose voice we are listening to? How do we know if the still, small whisper is God or the Enemy?” (Stoecklein, 77). In this instance, she talks about a supposed enemy inside of our own minds. It would be a manifestation of our own inner demons and these voices in our head would be intentionally causing us both mental and emotional pain. She is openly sharing her thoughts both in the moment and while she writes the book. It is in these moments that she has convinced me that she had tried to record the events of her marriage in the most honest way possible. That, and the interactions she had with Andrew. In a way, she is showing me not just her side of the story, she is showing me her truth, what I should consider the truth as she tells it.

This plays very much into the semic code of all the intertextual codes. By sharing her thoughts, she is attempting to show her perspective to the audience in an objective manner, or at least trying to portray it that way. Silverman talks about this as well in her own text about the semic code. “The fragmentation of the semic field fosters the illusion that the ‘truth’ precedes the enunciation, and the character exceeds the sum total of its attributes.” It shows that Stoecklein shares her thoughts in an attempt to convince us that everything she writes is the truth and told in an objective manner. She is trying to show the reader that these moments where we get to look inside her mind that these are her raw emotions in the moment.

I’m not the only one to notice this either. Angelina mentions this very thing in Complications in the Semic Code. Angelina takes it a step further when she talks about how these “little drabbles” take away from the rhetoric of Stoecklein’s book. It is supposed to be as much of a story about Andrew as it is supposed to be about herself. However, even in the moments where Andrew is the one struggling and the one who needs the comfort, she takes those moments and makes it about herself instead. Rather than talking about how hard it was to help Andrew deal with the pain and how she would do what she can to help him, she would talk about where his panic attacks would be an inconvenience for her. There’s even a moment where he is in the middle of having one of these attacks and all she can do is go back to bed and think about how he is taking away time for her to sleep. It is like we as the audience while we sympathize with Andrew and his pain, are supposed to feel bad for her because Andrew’s depression and panic attacks act as an inconvenience for her. “The ripple effect of suicide is terribly destructive, but can suicide really be considered selfish? The main question I received after Andrew’s suicide was, “How could he do that to his family?” It’s a question I ask myself all the time because the Andrew I knew would never have wanted to cause me, the boys, our family, or our church pain. The Andrew I knew loved his life” (Stoecklein, 99). At the beginning of the book, she was talking about how everything was fine and dandy, and how their marriage was just absolutely perfect. However, Andrew struggling with a mental illness takes away from that idea of hers, it takes away from the image she created of the relationship. So, she is trying to convince us as the audience that the image she created about their relationship is the truth and that Andrew’s depression is an obstacle in the path of that image. We are supposed to want her to help Andrew not because of any obligation or empathy towards him, but so that she can continue to live in her fantasy that everything about her life is great.

Rhetoric of Narrative:

While reading this book, I did not become the ideal type of audience for Stoecklein. Rabinowitz describes the two kinds of typical readers that appear when reading the stories, calling them the authorial audience and the narrative audience. “To the extent that our joining the authorial audience is a pretense, we are much less likely to receive the work’s intended effect. But the pretense involved in joining the narrative audience does not interfere with a novel’s effect; it is, on the contrary, an essential and desirable element in it.” The narrative audience is meant to take the author at the word and be pulled into the world of the book, as if they were an actual existing being within that world. Everything that the author intended for the reader to feel worked out perfectly with the narrative audience, and everything went as planned. That is not the case with the authorial audience, they cannot be so easily convinced or pulled into the world of the book. The intended effect that the writer had planned did not work on them, and so they give off different kinds of unexpected reactions when reading the text.

If I were to guess what the narrative audience for Fear Gone Wild were to look like, I would not expect it to be people who see themselves as Kayla Stoecklein. She is a unique individual that not everyone can relate to. Instead, I believe that the narrative audience would be Christian and takes their religion very seriously. They would have to agree that she did everything she could to help her husband and would have to truly believe that simply having faith would be enough to help him.

As someone who leans towards the authorial audience more, I have to simply disagree with the notion that religion would have been enough to help him. The man was already a pastor, if anything, that makes him more involved in the religion than Stoecklein herself. However, I have to take myself to a step even further than that. Stoecklein has a bachelor’s in psychology, that alone would mean that the cultural codes would have me take her words more to heart. I would have to believe that she is knowledgeable in how to help Andrew and that she did everything she could, making the best effort she can to help him. However, I simply did not see that in the events that she deigned to tell the reader about. Again, there were several instances where he had panic attacks and all she could do was talk about how it was an inconvenience for her and how she left it to God to sort things out. I am supposed to believe that this effort was enough to help him when it obviously didn’t. When not doing that, she would go completely off the rails and add stories or verses from the bible trying to connect it to her situation. “Just like Andrew, we see heroes of our faith struggle with the darkness of their minds all throughout Scripture: • David wrote in a psalm, ‘How long, LORD ? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?’ (Ps. 13:1–2)” (Stoecklein, 101).In the end, he still kills himself and all anyone gets out of it is Stoecklein trying to convince everyone that she did her best to help him. This is all while she is selling numerous copies of that type of coping to turn a profit. I simply see it as her not putting in enough effort to help her husband and exploiting his suicide for money. I would like to chalk it up to us just simply refusing to give into the ideas presented by Stoecklein and that we would be interpreting it incorrectly. But, every time I think that, I can’t help but think back to how she has a degree in psychology and despite that knew nothing about how to help her husband and at multiple times came off as insensitive and made it about herself.

Conclusion:

Fear Gone Wild does not at all seem like a story of hope through loss or healing. It feels much more like Kayla Stoecklein trying to explain her actions throughout Andrew’s story, and trying to justify her thoughts and beliefs. She is just as much writing this book for herself as she is for other people. However, looking at her thoughts and her actions towards Andrew in the story, I simply cannot trust her as a person. I can’t really trust her as an author, if there was any trust, it would be as a narrator, but only because she really made herself look bad. It’s hard to say if she is an unreliable narrator given how she really doesn’t paint herself in a flattering picture. She does share her general thoughts, and it seems to not matter if they make her look good or bad, the same goes for her actions. I believe that she was being honest when she was recounting the events of her marriage that lead up to Andrew’s suicide. However, I can’t help but question the motivations she has for sharing a book such as this.

I myself struggle with depression and have been working on healing myself and trying to improve my life over the years. For what it’s worth, I do believe that if someone with depression were to turn to religion to help themselves, I would believe that it could help them. After all, I myself find it hard to have faith in people and in myself, if faith in God and faith for his love for everyone would heal me, I would be all for it. That’s what I was expecting when I found this book online when asked to choose one for my group. We were all supposed to choose books that we haven’t read before, and looking at the description of the other books that the other group members chose to read over the course of the semester, I knew the main focus of our group was going to be on mental health and on mental illness. That’s why I had decided when I would look for books online that I haven’t read yet, the book would have that same topic in mind. The book left a poor taste in my mouth, and it wasn’t just me, it was the entire group. Through all our conversations over this book, it was us talking about how incompetent she was at helping her husband. That poor taste leads us to question her motives in writing this book. If I were to go back in time and go over which books to choose, again, I would have probably looked for a different book entirely. Suffice to say, I can’t say that Kayla Stoecklein really helped me as someone who struggles from the same mental illness as her husband. Quite honestly, I can’t even say that I’m surprised that someone like her would lead a depressed man to suicide, as she is simply not helpful or supportive as much as she thinks she is.

case closed in red stamp style, stamped on white background

Reflection:

This course had definitely shown me a lot more than I would have ever expected. When it comes to the Writing Arts core value 1: “Writing Arts students will demonstrate understanding of a variety of genre conventions and exhibit rhetorical adaptability in applying those conventions.” I feel like that being placed in a reading group really helped with that. I don’t think I would have understood even half of the things that were taught in class if it weren’t for these groups. I was able to discuss the several terms I was shown with the others who were about as confused as I was. But the more we discussed the rhetoric, or the controlling and the counter ideas, the more we got a better understanding of not only what these terms mean, but how to apply them to the text that we were supposed to read. I also believe that working with these reading groups helped a lot with me creating all the blog posts I had to do over the course of the semester. Discussing it with Andrew Kopp was helpful, but also discussing it with the group, we were able to convey the lessons and discuss them in such a way where I could understand it and where I wouldn’t struggle as much. I have to admit, the course was intimidating at the beginning of the semester, given how it was the only course I had that had its own discord server dedicated to it. But the server itself was also helpful and an easy way for us as the students to connect with each other and get questions answered. It certainly does a better job at that than a classroom setting. That is not to say that I do not enjoy or miss going to the classrooms. In fact, the reason I was put into group 5 was because we were the group that were most interested in having in-person meetings during the Covid-19 pandemic.

I want to take the time to give a personal shoutout to Angelina, our group leader. Because of the unique situation going on with our group, she had to engage with us both as a group leader and a member of the group. Suffice to say, we as a group had a different experience from everyone else over the course of the semester, but it was fun, and I’m happy that I got to take part in it.

We all as a group had a hard time getting through Kayla Stoecklein’s work, but we managed to pull through. Quite frankly, while it was the worst book we had read for the whole semester, it was the one where we got engaged with each other the most. The most fun conversations we had were talking about how much we disliked this book and how we couldn’t wait to be done with it. So, with that, I’d also like to give a shoutout to Paige and Sierra too for being able to slug through this book with me. Though the book itself was not enjoyable, all of us talking about how we disliked it was.

When it comes to the second core value of Writing Arts: “Writing Arts students will understand theories of writing and reading and be able to apply them to their own writing.” I feel as if this course did help me get a better understanding of how to approach my own work. It will certainly be easier for me to recognize and describe what I am aiming to do with my works in the future. It certainly gave me a better idea on how to use the controlling and counter ideas, and it painted a clear picture to me of what kinds of readers I should expect when I share my work. “To showcase a controlling idea, Kayla attempts to show how Andrew was seeking help for himself. Of course he was getting medication, seeking professional help, but he had also decided to turn to religion for help as well. […] While it is helpful for someone with depression to seek a therapist and get medication to treat their mental illness. None of it is going to really help unless the depressed person tries to help themselves as well. For Andrew, Kayla believed that the way he could help himself was through religion. It is a legitimate hobby as any, and it can help those to cope. However, that doesn’t mean that Andrew is out of the woods yet, there is still the counter idea.” (Blog 1). I would have had a much harder time with identifying these ideas before, and it would have been much harder for me to try to put myself into the mind of either the author or a specific audience. At least now, I can have a better idea with how I want to structure my work in the future. 

When it comes to the third core value of Writing Arts: “Writing Arts students will demonstrate the ability to critically read complex and sophisticated texts in a variety of subjects. ​” This course has definitely helped me as an English major. It has given me a better idea of how to approach my close reading and it helped me realize what I should look for when analyzing the text. “I wanted to get a better understanding of how to analyze the semic code in the story, and to do that, I had to apply an analysis to myself as a reader. I found myself asking ‘what would be a seme for me?’ Taking a closer look at the readings in our reading group this semester, in terms of me as a reader, I would have to say part of my personal semic code would be studying the struggles of mental illness. The reason why I feel this is because in today’s society, mental illness has become a widespread discussion and there has been a large amount of encouragement to further study the issue. Mental illness itself has a significant impact on my culture and me as an individual, after all, why else would we be reading so many books about it?” (Blog 3). I can say with confidence that this course has made me both a better reader and a better writer. I feel like that with moments like this, when I analyze a story, I like to dissect it to try to understand what the author is going for, what themes they wanted to include, what emotions they wanted to convey, what thoughts they wanted to get from the reader. I feel that thanks to this class, it’s really sharpened that skill.  

Kayla Stoecklein might not be the best at conveying her message or making herself look good. However, I can at least say that she has painted a clear picture of what not to do as a writer. 

Inventory:

https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/inventory-and-reflection/

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin:

Blog 1: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/09/13/practice-blog-1-whats-at-stake-for-you/ -Comment

Blog 2: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/09/15/blog-post-2/ -Comment

Blog 3: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/09/17/what-are-the-intertextual-codes-in-giovanni-room/ -Comment

Blog 4: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/09/22/the-dichotomy-of-acceptance/ -Blog

Slade House:

Blog 1: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/09/29/beginning-to-open-doors-in-slade-house/ -Comment

Blog 2: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/01/mysterious-case-of-ivy-and-fox-pins/ -Comment

Blog 3: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/05/a-battle-of-wit-and-the-sexes/ -Comment

Blog 4: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/08/temptations-of-the-reader/ -Blog

Turtles All the Way Down

Blog 1: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/14/all-the-way-down/ -Comment

Blog 2: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/15/to-know-leads-to-danger/ -Comment

Blog 3: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/20/code-behind-free-will/ -Blog

Blog 4: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/22/the-self-among-audiences/ -Comment

The Bell Jar

Blog 1: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/27/to-be-perfect-or-not-to-be-that-is-the-question/ -Comment

Blog 2: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/10/29/trying-to-scream-in-the-void/ -Blog

Blog 3: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/11/05/the-power-of-the-cultural-codes-and-controlling-values/ -Comment

Blog 4: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/11/08/the-fig-tree-and-the-bell-jar/ -Comment

Fear Gone Wild:

Blog 1: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/11/10/good-intentions-are-not-enough/ -Blog

Blog 2: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/complications-in-the-semic-code/ -Comment

Blog 3: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/11/19/codes-of-faith/ -Comment

Blog 4: https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/11/24/when-good-intentions-are-ignorant/ -Comment

Works Cited:

1. McKee, Robert. “Structure and Meaning.” Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: Regan, 1997. 110-131. 
2. Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford UP, 1983.
3. Rabinowitz, Peter. “Truth In Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences.” Critical Inquiry. 4.1 (1977): 121-141. 

Sierra Lombardo-AB

Turtles All the Way Down

By John Green

Before this class started I would say I was an average reader and free writer, I had a bunch of free time that I would spend reading and writing, whether it was novels that I already have read or new novels I was trying to get myself into. As college started to approach I started to slack in my reading and did a lot more writing. I didn’t have time to get into new novels, I just had time for whatever my teacher assigned me. Now as my senior year approached I didn’t really know which class to take, I had a list of options but felt bewildered because this was my option and I didnt have anyone there to guide me to which one to take. I had to think of ‘what do I see myself interested in?” and “would I like this class?” based on the titles of the classes. As I approached How Writer’s Read I felt that this was a new opportunity to understand myself as a reader since I wanted to be a english teacher.

Going into this class I didn’t know what to expect, a lot of my other Writing Arts classes have either a lot of reading or a lot of writing but this was an even level of both. Before the class started we got to explore our early childhood life by listing all the books we read back then till now; which made me feel ashamed because I haven’t read many books recently and don’t really know what kind of books are popular nowadays. To go further into depth of feeling ashamed, is that when I came to college I didn’t have time to read, I was so busy with homework and readings that my teacher gave me that I didn’t have time to relax and read. I felt ashamed because as I came to this assignment I felt no guide into what I wanted, no one was there to tell me what to do or what book was good, I had to form my own opinion into what I wanted to read. The fun part was being able to explore all the books I read in the past and how much they have shaped me as a reader. I enjoy reading for fun, but nowadays I don’t have the time to do that because I’m constantly studying or working. 

When the class started we were put into groups of close similarity and we were to pick a book that no one in our group read prior. I didn’t even know where to begin because I didn’t want to pick a book that may seem boring or interesting to me but not to others. I had about 2 books I really wanted to adventure in, my first book was Speak. The reason I picked this book was because there was a feeling when reading the summary that made it seem so real. That the situations happening were situations that take place in today’s society. I brought this book up to my group but one of my group members has already read it so I had to go with my second option of being, Turtles All the Way Down by John Green, this book was very similar to my first book, but it’s based off of one of the major causes of death in America today, suicide. Suicide hits home for me as I lost someone to suicide and watched someone commit suicide last year. With this book I thought I would be able to open my mind to the feelings I should have felt or answer my unanswered questions. What really struck a turn was that almost everyone in my group had picked books based around mental health/ mental illness. 

Summary

Let me take you further into what my book is about. Turtles All the Way Down (henceforth Turtles) by John Green presents an example of the bildungsroman, a genre of fiction in which a young person matures and develops (or fails to mature and develop) into an adult. In this case that tells the young person is Aza, a 16 teen year old high schooler, who encounters all of the generic issues and confrontations a young person faces in high school, including romance, friendship, loss, with a bit of mystery and adventure, but she has a significant handicap: she has a disorder called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This disorder threatens her ability to function effectively in response to these issues, but in the end, through assistance from her friends and family, she ultimately faces these challenges, takes responsibility for the mess she has made of her life, and ultimately becomes in her own eyes, a human being.

Although these may seem like normal high school cliches, Aza’s life was far from normal. She not only suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) but also struggles to feel like an autonomous self/being, as she thinks she is a fictional character or an outcast in the world. As we read through this story we see a first person view, so we are inside Aza’s mind and have access to her inner thoughts. This brings us closer to who she is and at times helps us better understand how the OCD affects her. In the start of the book we see a little bit of her OCD, when she experiences what she called a “thought spiral” (Green 8). Aza has a best friend named Daisy, who is the complete opposite of her. Aza is someone who is hopelessly lost in her own thoughts, while Daisy is full of excitement for life and relationships, they compliment and irritate each other. Once we build more on the storyline, a mysterious disappearance of Russell Pickett happens. When Daisy and Aza find out that there is a reward, Daisy is exhilarated by the idea of solving a mystery and getting a reward, but Aza is feeling the complete opposite because she knows Pickett’s son, Davis. Daisy insists on visiting and meeting Davis and convinces Aza to go. We see an instant connection between Davis and Aza, they both lost their parents and now Davis might lose the other one. As their romance unfolds we can see it’s not a normal teen love story between them. Aza is completely controlled by her OCD and her compulsions, and as we see her suffer we learn what it’s like for someone to suffer with OCD. We grow to see that Green built this theme around Aza’s OCD and how extreme it gets, especially when it comes to her wanting to drink hand sanitizer because she is deathly afraid of contracting Clostridium difficile. I didn’t know what this disease was but as Aza becomes more and more afraid of contracting it I automatically imagine it being awful and severe. I felt when reading and writing my first blog that Green built this dark image of Aza and her constant battle with who she is and he doesn’t shy away from her loneliness. I think what really stood out to me was when Aza was talking about who she was 

“It’s so weird, to know you’re crazy and not be able to do anything about it, you know?” (Green 203) 

She is constantly trying to portray her ongoing frustration, 

“It’s not like you believe yourself to be normal. You know there is a problem. But you can’t figure a way through to fixing it.”(Green 203)

Robert Mckee was an author who was very well known for his “”Structure and Meaning.” Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting,” which introduced us to Premise, Controlling Idea, and Counter Idea. To get to finding out what the premise was, I had to look back on the readings by Mckee, that defined premise as “the idea that inspires the writer’s desire to create a story, an example would be What would happen if..?”(Mckee 112). After discussion with Angelina and messages from Paige about what the premise would be we finally came to a conclusion” “One must be independent and emotionally open in order to feel like a true individual.” It was hard to see that this was it because I was so blinded by her love life and her battle with OCD that I forgot about Aza not identifying or feeling like she is human. Throughout this entire story we are constantly in Aza’s head battling how she feels and who she is. But when I dug deeper into what I thought the premise could be there were other ideas that came to my mind, one being “how does someone suffering with impairment deal with normal things?” Since she suffers from OCD we see that it constantly is taking over her life and she can’t seem to get past it. 

Before we entered into the controlling idea, I had to go over my notes on Rober Mckee’s definition of controlling idea, it is “the story’s ultimate meaning expressed through the action and aesthetic emotion of the last act’s climax” (Mckee 112). The last act’s climax of Turtles is when Aza tries to gain her mothers trust back, this is when we see Aza 

Entering into the controlling idea, Being passive and defining one’s self by their mental illness leads to feeling indistinguishable. Aza wants to ignore the chaos in her life by pushing it off because she wants no part in her real life. All of this leads us to the counter idea, What happens if you have to acknowledge your identity?” In Robert Mckee’s reading, he mentions that the the controlling idea is 

“the story’s ultimate meaning expressed through the action and aesthetic emotion of the last acts climax, it shapes the thought” (Mckee 112)

Which made sense because Aza wanted to be invisible and having this illness put who she was behind a mask and made her seem invisible.

The value graph I included shows Aza’s struggle from identifying herself as a no one to someone. We see this right away in the beginning when she identifies herself as a fictional character. “Anybody can look at you.  It’s quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see” (9).There was a constant battle between identity, love, and friendship with Aza and this graph gives better insight into the positive and negative. But in the end Aza makes a breakthrough with who she is referring to herself as a singular proper noun.

Genre and Form 

To get to the genre and form of the book I had to look back and review Paige’s blog on this, as I review she ties together how the controlling and counter ideas form the roles of genre. She also brings about the mystery that Green blinded us with when it came to Davis’s dad and his disappearance. Paige also mentioned bildungsroman, which is a narrative of development or maturation, transitioning from adolescence into adulthood. And we can really see this grow throughout the novel, as Aza, a 16 year old, wanting to be fictional and an outcast amongst the drama around her yet grows to accept and become a someone. She was identifying herself and her mental illness as 2 different people and making sure that the OCD was personified as a demon. 

I definitely think throughout this story I was blocked from what I wanted to see and what I didn’t want to see because their was so much going on: the disappearance, her OCD, getting help, the love story, her thoughts on committing suicide, and her friendship, it was almost as if Green wanted to block us from understanding the bigger picture and hid it all under mystery tropes. I do think Paige and I see the mystery behind Green differently, as Paige sees it as Aza’s fear of C.diff and contracting it so she becomes insane and thinks drinking hand sanitizer would protect her, were as I see it being Aza not wanting to recognize who she is and that she is a person rather than fictional. But this all leads to the same struggle which is Aza’s OCD. I do feel that Paige’s blog helped me understand the hermeneutic code and how it operates better. 

But there’s more than just the Hermeneutic Code that gets represented in this novel, something else I want to cover is in Angelina’s comment which talks about the semic code. The semic code can be defined by Silverman as “represents the major device for themortizing person, objects, or places”(Silverman 251). What the semic code in this matter represents is Aza’s OCD and that gets brought to my attention through Angelina’s comment. We have so many questions about her OCD and how controlling it gets, but later in the end we watch Aza grow from the semic code and understand herself as a proper noun, which is a form of her taking control. 

With talk about codes, I become aware of the codes that are around me, one being the Proairetic code, which is introduced to us by Silverman as  “plot related events that lead to certain actions or reactions from the characters and maybe even the reader. This code determines the causal (cause and effect), narrative sequence and syntagmatic progression.”() This is something we can see in Aza’s mental illness and OCD because as she suffers with OCD her mental illness is impacted and puts a strain on her life. This also affects who she is as a character, for example her obsession with staying germ free and drinking hand sanitizer to help her. Another example is her obsession with the cut on her finger. “Ever since I was little, I’ve pressed my right thumbnail into the finger pad of my middle finger, and so now there’s this weird callus over my fingerprint. After so many years of doing this, I can open up a crack in the skin really easily, so I cover it up with a Band-Aid to try to prevent infection” (Green, 6). With cause theirs and affect and these are the many instances where we can see the Proairetic code take place. 

Intertextual Codes

Throughout the novel I felt that gender played a major role in this, as we were able to see that gender differentiates between Davis and Aza. Davis has more of the power when it comes to certain situations. We see him get along with Aza but when it comes to small instances she becomes a bit more imposing and close minded. Davis has so much power because he holds the connections and has more money then Aza. I actually didn’t think this at all about Davis till I read about Brandon’s thoughts in his blog. I honestly read through the whole book being blinded to Davis’ power over situations. But when I read about this I almost thought maybe Davis shares something with Aza and her OCD. 

There is another instant where we see a disconnection between a character, Davis, this was brought to my attention in one of the comments that was made by my group leader, “‘…it was just so weird, to hear the newscasters say, ‘Russell Davis Pickett has been reported missing.’ Because I was right here’” (Green 31). Davis struggles to identify himself and feels overshadowed because he only is connected to who his father is. Since he only has a father and no mother in the picture he can feel identified as his father’s son instead of an actual individual, especially because his dad holds the power and money. We can see a connection between him and Aza since they both suffer to identify themselves, yet there are differences to it since Aza is controlled by her OCD. She calls herself fictional, a sidekick, authored by others, controlled by her OCD, her mother’s daughter. Aza puts herself in categories that are outside of herself and others, essentially identifying as an outcast. What’s interesting is that both characters feel invisible in their lives. Now as we stated above the controlling and counter ideas maybe this is something we need to think harder on. Since society today is so involved, wouldn’t we know if we are a romantically good person in a good relationship? Leading to the opposing controlling value that could be represented as, Giving yourself to others doesn’t leave room for you to find yourself. You won’t be able to find those individual unique aspects if you define yourself but others. Since both characters depend so much on what others think they are stuck not fulfilling their life and are only able to live through the eyes and beliefs of what others think.

Rhetoric of Narrative

As my group and I got to the end of the novel there might be some questions about what kind of reader are we? In “A Rhetoric of Reading by James Seitz, he helps us identify what a capable reader is, someone “who not only has the ability to ‘follow’ the text but also the ability to jump ahead of it” (146). I tend to be that type of reader in every book I read, I always want to assume what is happening next. But I also feel that it’s so easy to be that type of reader, because when you get so involved in what you are reading you just want to know the next without even getting there yet. There is a struggle with being a capable reader because guessing what is going to happen next can set a bad  tone for what you are about to read, and can make you get mad at characters. Another instance of a complete split in the novel is when her OCD takes over her body so much that she drinks hand sanitizer, when this happened I stopped in my tracks, put the book down and said “What the hell just happened!!??” I couldn’t believe she drank hand sanitizer, like that would free her body from germs, more like that would kill her!Everything that I read in that moment was completely gone and I was more concerned about her and her health. It was like those moments when you’re watching tv and you just wanna tell the actors not to do something but you aren’t present, that’s how I felt. 

Being a capable reader means “who not only has the ability to ‘follow’ the text but also the ability to jump ahead of it” (Seitz 146). I believe that I become a capable reader since I believe that Aza’s OCD is making her into a monster. But since I think that it makes her a monster doesnt that mean I am turning over into an inauthentic resistant reader. Because they would be the type of reader that believes Aza to be exaggerating her struggle with OCD. Since she does the most absurd things like drink sanitizer. “It is the capable reader (the authorial reader/narrative reader) that rejects any of these ideas. They understand the power of compulsions and irrational thoughts that come with this disorder.” (Blog 4) 

I started to get stuck on how to go on from here, but something that was brought to my attention was the fact that this novel was told in a first person perspective, what if Daisy or Davis was telling the story instead? There’s a bias around Aza’s life and what happens in it, since we can only see her thoughts and her emotions. This would be an example of an inauthentic reader because people might not believe that Aza is an accurate depiction of someone who struggles with OCD. A person with a specific mental illness like OCD can have completely different experience from another person who also has OCD. I think as a reader I was too much trapped in her head and in her mental illness that I didn’t get the full experience of the other illnesses she might be struggling with.

Conclusion

In all I think this book opened my eyes to what type of a reader I am, what codes do I read under and many more. Before I was reading just to read, and felt either some connection or no connection to the book. I also always assumed what would happen next or if I didn’t like how the book was going I would stop and just forget about the book. As I come to the end I think this book and the other books I was fortunate to read shaped me and I was able to grow into a new reader and writer. I do believe that this journey throughout the class has been very hard and powerful. By hard I mean it was hard for me to see anything else of what I wanted and this shaped me to be more open and seeing further. Before this class started I felt that I was already a powerful reader and writer and now that this class comes to an end I feel that I have become a different type of reader, one who can see the different codes, understands the genre and form and can look beyond the text. 

Inventory

https://readinglistbygroup5.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/sierras-inventory/

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

• Blog 1– Comment
• Blog 2– Blog
• Blog 3– Comment
• Blog 4– Comment

Slade House

• Blog 1– Comment
• Blog 2– Blog
• Blog 3– Comment
• Blog 4– Comment

Turtles All the Way Down

• Blog 1– Blog
• Blog 2– Comment
• Blog 3– Comment
• Blog 4– Comment 

The Bell Jar

• Blog 1– Comment
• Blog 2– Comment
• Blog 3– Comment
• Blog 4– Blog

Fear Gone Wild

• Blog 1– Comment
• Blog 2– Comment
• Blog 3– Blog
• Blog 4– Comment

Work Cited

• McKee, Robert. “Structure and Meaning.” Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: Regan, 1997. 110-131. 
• Rabinowitz, Peter. “Truth In Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences.” Critical Inquiry. 4.1 (1977): 121-141. 
• Seitz, James E. “A Rhetoric of Reading.” Rebirth of Rhetoric: Essays in Language, Culture, and Education. By Richard Andrews. London: Routledge, 1992. 141-55. 
• Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford UP, 1983.

Brendan’s Inventory

In terms of what kinds of books impacted me as a reader, it would be no surprise in saying that the Harry Potter series had one of the earliest impacts of all the books I’ve read in my life. The reflection is meant to have me talk about just one book at a time, however mentioning just one book out of the whole series won’t do J. K. Rowling’s work any justice. Surprising no one, I grew up through most grade school reading these books. The reason why I got attracted to the series in the first place was the characters. Like myself, Harry Potter was a reserved little boy who was almost constantly bullied by kids in school and by family members at home. Being able to relate to him on a personal level, his story served as a bit of an escape for me whenever I was stressed out and needed time for myself. From the way I see it, these books helped me go through a rough patch in my life and I couldn’t be more grateful. Aside from relating to the characters, however, it was also the entire fantasy world that got me so fascinated in the first place. That is what made me want to read in the first place.

While J. K. Rowling is the author I must give credit to, to get me into reading in the first place. She had passed the torch to Andrzej Sapkowski in the later years. He is the man who had gotten me into the Fantasy genre for books. He is known for his work in The Witcher series, that same series with a video game trilogy and a Netflix show. Every little detail was well thought-out and fascinating that I almost wanted to live in that world. Not only that, but the characters were very life-like in their behaviors and flaws. It was astounding to see how human these fictional characters were with their motivations and the decisions they would make. However, the credit doesn’t just stop there. From time to time, I like to write my own fiction and I have to give Sapkowski credit for inspiring me to become a writer as well.

In terms of an all-time favorite book of mine, it would have to be The Dark Tower by Stephen King. While he did make an entire series out of this title, I had only read the first book so far, but I am already hooked. As life-like as the characters in The Witcher were, King takes his own characters in his own fantasy setting and cranks it up to eleven. While he is known for his horror genre, his dark fantasy series is nothing to be scoffed at either. As a writer, this is the man I took notes from in terms of how to build my worlds and how to create my characters. Not only that, but also on how to breathe life into the characters as well. From the way I see it, he is one of those writers that others should aspire to be. While I doubt I will ever be as famous or as successful as him, I will still take note of everything that worked for him and see if it can work for me.

If there is one thing I have to thank my school district for, it is for getting me into the dystopian future genre. George Orwell’s work was always interesting to me in the first place. The way he builds his worlds makes it very believable (except for Animal Farm), I could see those futures being entirely possible in the real world. For years, I have been fascinated with politics and social justice issues and his work is what sparked that fire in me in high school. Before reading his books, I didn’t really see the value in politics and the drama between politicians. However, seeing as how they are the people that have the most profound affect upon the world, Orwell’s work served as a good wake up call for me. I realized that if I didn’t speak out for my human rights and protest when necessary, the futures that he imagined could easily become what our society turns into.

After diving into politics, it was only inevitable that I would eventually turn my attention to war and the issues that arise from that. In terms of a book that helped shape my opinions about that, I would have to give credit to All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. He does a perfect job at highlighting the main issue of generations that look for war, and that issue is that they eventually find it. While it takes place in the ranks of the German army during WWI, he wrote it in such a way that anyone of any nationality can look at the characters and sympathize with their experience. Watching the characters ever-eroding faith in his country throughout the book was interesting to say the least. The horrors of war are portrayed well with what the soldiers had to deal with on the battlefield and watching the main character cope with his first kill. I’ll have to admit that before I had read this book, I wanted to enlist myself into the military. However, after simply imagining what it was like to be a soldier in the middle of a war, I can never bring myself to sign up willingly now. It makes me more appreciative to those willing to make that sacrifice as well.

Sierra’s Inventory

Growing up, I struggled with reading and comprehending what I was reading. I took classes outside of school to catch up with the kids in my class. But I was always afraid to read outloud in the classroom, especially when my teacher did popcorn reading. I always felt like everyone in the class picked on me knowing that I was a slow reader. My parents watched me come home from school upset because of how embarrassed I was. That’s when they realized it was time to get me reading all the time. My parents would label everything in my house to help me read. 

To start they bought these books called “The Little Critter’s” by Mercer Mayer and that’s when I started my reading experience, these books were life changing for me. They helped me grow not only as a reader but as a person. They inspired me to never lose hope as a person, not only were they impacting but at the time they were fun to read. There were so many pictures to look at and it helped me open my imagination by placing myself in the situation. Also after my parents and I read a page we would look for the hidden mouse or spider which was fun. One of my favorites was “Just a Bad Day” when I came home from school upset about my reading ability, this book helped me through it all. There will always be bad days and we just have to do whatever we can to make it better. These books have inspired me as a reader to be more personal with my work, I want to inspire others and tackle subjects that are going on in today’s society that people can relate to.

The next inspirational book I read was “Because of Winn-Dixie” by Kate DiCamillo, this book was read during a time when I started to have middle school drama with my “friends.” I thought this book was inspiring because of the impact a dog had on someone’s life. With Opel being new to the town, she comes across a dog, she names Winn- Dixie. Winn-Dixie didn’t have much, he was a scruffy outdoor dog but helped Opal become more open. In the end Opal learns to let go, just a little, and that friendship and forgiveness can sneak up on you like a sudden summer storm. This book has opened my eyes to forgiveness and new friendships, it’s also helped me grow as a reader because it was something that was more personal for me, I love reading true and personal stories especially if I can relate to them. I look forward to the impact a story can give. 

The next on my list is both “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak and “Number the Stars” by  Lois Lowry. I read these books in school for a class project, after reading both I fell in love. As a reader I knew I loved reading books that I could relate to personally but I loved reading about stories that happened in our world. The Holocaust was an awful event to have ever happened and to read about it, I could never imagine the pain that people went through. It is so fascinating to read about this time because there are so many stories that people want to tell. “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak takes place in a time of the Holocaust, 1939. The main character, Liesel,  life changes when she finds a single object, partially hidden in the snow, it is a Gravedigger’s Handbook, this ends up being her first book thievery. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library. Which makes everything more dangerous since her foster family starts to hide Jews in their basement. Originally I watched the movie “The Book Thief” and it was amazing that I wanted to read the book. As a reader this taught me that I enjoy watching the movies first so that when I read I can see exactly what is happening. “Number the Stars” by  Lois Lowry is a more personal experience from a Jew herself, Annemarie and her best friend Ellen often think of what life was like before the war. At the time it is  1943 and their life in Copenhagen is different  with school, food shortages, and the Nazi soldiers marching around town. When the Jews of Denmark are “relocated,” Ellen moves in with the Johansens and pretends to be one of the family members. Soon Annemarie is asked to go on a dangerous mission to save her best friend’s life. 

“The Face on the Milk Carton” by  Caroline B. Cooney was different from the normal books I have read. I started out with books that had personal meaning to books that were dark and mysterious. The Face on the Milk Carton was definitely different for my taste and also left me constantly wondering. This book was about fifteen-year-old Janie Johnson, who didn’t know she was kidnapped until she was staring at the reflection of herself on the milk carton. She felt like it was unreal, that her “parents” would even kidnap. Leading to her investigating into her past, the twisted events that take place change the lives of two families forever. This book inspired me as a reader because not only do I love how twisted it was. Although as a reader I did learn from this book, it felt very long and as if the author did try to extend her work too long.

The Premise of “The face on the milk carton” is what would happen if an adolescent child discovers that they had been abducted as a young child? The controlling idea would be when we pursue the truth, we might destroy what is familiar and comfortable, but we become free in the process. Counter idea: when we live inside a lie, we might remain safe, but our lives are robbed of meaning.

Paige’s Inventory

1. Babymouse: Our Hero by Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm

The book Babymouse: Our Hero was the second comic book of the series that I read in the third grade. Before Babymouse, I did not read many books; however, my eyes opened up when I read the first Babymouse book called Babymouse: Queen of the World. I read it repeatedly, which my English Special-Ed teacher noticed and bought me the second book. When I saw it was the number one seller in New York, I thought she bought it in New York, but it at the Deptford. 

So, BM: Our Hero was about a young girl named Babymouse, and the characters in the series are animals. The plot for that story was about Babymouse overcoming the fear of dodgeball and gym by she defeated the other team, where her enemy, Felicia Furrypaws, knocked down her best friend. The comic book gave me the desire to read and write, for I was interested in drawing illustrations, but after reading Babymouse, I was interested in reading. The book was mimetic by how it showed realistic and relatable scenes with a fictional character, and I read it for the experience. 

Babymouse: Our Hero showed me as a reader that books can be relatable, while as a writer, I can do both fiction and realistic scenarios. Which is still what I look for in my readings. It was a challenge to be interested in reading and writing, yet I try to write the way the realistic scenes with fictional style.

2. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

The book Speak was about a girl named Melinda Sordino, who enters high school with no friends after she called the police on a summer party. However, no one knows she called the police after being sexually assaulted by a senior. Over the year, Melinda recovered her strength to speak up about what happened to her. It connected with the controlling idea by the question of it what if a senior assaulted a girl? 

Which happened with Melinda at a party. The premise of the book was about the power of the truth, for will it help to speak up? And it was helpful with the counter idea being Melinda revealing the truth, for her ex-best friend was dating her attacker, and everyone knows the truth about why Melinda called the police. 

Although I read books about serious topics, Speak was different by how it was relatable for the character being in high school. I read Speak in my freshman year of high school, and it opened my eyes to new ways of writing styles. The writing style made me challenge myself to write in different styles, POVs, and genres as well. Also, I was keen on writing in a poetic form from how the author, Anderson, did with Speak. When I read now, I search for books with realistic scenarios, and that is relatable too, which guides me to write. The book Speak is mimetic because I read for the experience, and the characters may be fictional, but they go through genuine issues that the author herself had gone through. Thanks to Speak, I find that I enjoy writing young adult fiction by how that is the book’s genre. 

3. All But My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein

All But My Life was the Memoir, and the plot sinner plot was about the author, Gerda, surviving the Holocaust. The book ended with her meeting her husband that was an American soldier, and they moved to America and got married. I read All But My Life for summer reading, and it was the first summer reading I enjoyed and the first book to make me tear up. The story was mimetic by I read for the experience and how the character went through real issues in her life.

It made me want to write something that would bring people to tear, so my challenge was to strengthen how I write with emotion. I want to do it better, so I tried to describe the characters’ feelings by symbolism, talking to themselves, metaphors, and analogy. But before I read stories, I skim them to see how the emotions are composed. 

4. Lord of The Flies by William Golding

While Lord of The Flies is a classic novel, I did not enjoy it. The plot set during WWII with a group of boys plane crashed onto an island, that symbolized the Garden of Eden. The plot revolved around the notion that it is evil within people. The book is thematic, for I read it to know the meaning of what it was about, and the book genres are adult young adult fiction and psychological. 

The description throughout the novel made it hard for me to enjoy the book. It confused about what was happening, what were the characters were, and how the characters were thinking and feeling. It was the writer’s fault that I don’t like it, but it’s just my preference for reading, which was why my challenge. I had a problem describing too much, so I tried to die down the description in my stories. I established this into my reading by I skim through books to examine it. 

5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Another classic that I read was The Great Gatsby I, however, enjoyed this one. I loved the meaning, and symbolism like the symbolism of the green light and social statuses were in conflict.

The plot revolved around the love affair of Gatsby and Daisy, who were reunited by her cousin Nick while addressing the conflict within social classes. The Great Gatsby is historical fiction, and mimetic by I read for the experience of the novel. 

This book challenged me by I wanted to incorporate meaningful passages and symbolism. Before, I did have meaning in my stories, but I saw the validation of having them. I tried to did this with books by skimming them. For symbolism, however, it feels like there is not much symbolism anymore, but a good old school rating now.  

When Good Intentions Are Ignorant.

My group read Fear Gone Wild: A Story of Mental Illness, Suicide, and Hope Through Loss by Kayla Stoecklein. It was our last text in our How Writers Read class. This book was hard for me to submit to the reading. Even harder than Slade House, which had soul-eating twins. Green’s book, Turtles All The Way Down, and Plath’s, The Bell Jar, told mental health in an enlightened way and did not dismiss it, which made it easy to submit to the narrator and the text. This book was a memoir about the author losing her husband, Andrew, to suicide, and it talked about mental health. As I read for the thematic register, I read to know more about the story and the author. That meant that I was interested in how the author would continue out the story, though I predicted there would be a lot of God involved and less of Andrew. I was curious about the story and craved to know how it ended, and it did with talk about Christianity.

You mean it ended with the attempt to persuade an audience who is struggling to square their Christian faith with the real occurrence of mental illness? 

You might be wondering why it was a challenge to submit to the text. My group and I had a difficult time understanding Stoecklein and her beliefs about mental illness. There are two types of readers, and one is the capable reader, which James E. Seitz explains in “A Rhetoric of Reading”, as, “one who not only has the ability to ‘follow’ the text but also the ability to jump ahead of it …” (146)

So that was me when I started reading the story. I understood the story involved a suicide, either ending on it or talking about it throughout the book. The reason being was that Stoecklein said,

 “I had it all. The man, the kids, the beautiful house, and even the mom car. My future was full of vibrant colors, grand adventures, and wonderful purpose- until it wasn’t. When fear crept into our house, it dimmed the lights and swiftly spread like wildfire. Our peaceful home, our predictable life, our hopeful future, all set ablaze by mental illness”  

(3)

It was easy to tell how the story was going to play out as Stoecklein grabbed the audience’s attention by being honest about the story. That she was about to share with the readers, but as I continued reading the book, I further strayed away from being a capable reader but an “inauthentic resistant reader”, which Kopp said to be someone who does not follow the text and submit to the narrative. I became that because I started to feel unable to sympathize with the author by how she handled things with Andrew. 

For example, Stoecklein admitted not sympathizing with people who had depression for she thought they were being ‘dramatic’ and moms with postpartum as selfish for leaving their families to do all of the work. Even when her husband had a panic attack, she said,

I wasn’t thinking clearly. In my exhaustion I just wanted him to stop being ‘so dramatic’ and lie back down.

(14)

In a way, it felt like Stoecklein made the book more about herself than Andrew and showed that she tolerated his depression throughout the story. In another quote that caught my eye was her response to Andrew confiding in her about how he thought of killing himself. She said, “ ‘Andrew you know this is the most selfish thing you could do ever do, right? Or about me? What about the boys? Andrew, you couldn’t do that to the boys. They love you so much. How far did you think about it? Did you Google it? Did you research how to do it? You wouldn’t actually do that, right?’ I was mad, confused, and stunned. He was being vulnerable and honest, and my mind wasn’t in a healthy enough place to handle it.” (80)

Some moments piled up that showed her actions were not cool, or up to par, or realistically “good”. She created a particular image of herself in her writing that I, as a reader, could not help but be disconnected from her words and actions. I concluded that she was acting as an unreliable narrator. Of course, it was not easy to hear someone you love to say that. But it was unsettling how fast Stoecklein snapped. Besides her ignorance of mental health, I found that the messages of God persuade me to think she may be an unreliable narrator. Now I grew up Catholic, but I consider myself agnostic. It was hard to understand Stoecklein. She was a Christian and part of a church since her husband became a pastor. That was fine for her being religious, and there was nothing wrong with her being religious and using it to cope with her tragic loss. I found it hard to read about her relying on God too much, in my opinion.

For instance, Stoecklein said,

I found value and purpose and supporting the call God had a place on my guy.

(85)

The more I thought about it, the more I recognized I was not part of the desired demographics for her book. I do not consider myself a religious person, and I wish Stoecklein talked more about her husband, mental health, and her experience, but less about God. Though, I realized that God was a character in her story, for she talked about her beliefs a lot. I will give her credit for there were statistics about mental health for the priests, as that was interesting to read. I often wondered if I was being too hard on Stoecklein and concluded that she was not a bad wife. She tried her best with what little information she knew, and it came out wrong, but she had good intentions. And it was odd how she focused on Andrew getting better that she forgot to take care of herself, which made it difficult for her to be there emotionally for Andrew.

Enough of me as a reader, and let’s examine the type of audience meant for the book. As I said before, the capable reader is someone who can easily follow the narrative and not doubt them. Well, who would that be? The answer would be those who have religious beliefs that correlate with Stoecklein’s. That would include people who would also agree that God could take care of their problems and maybe ignorant towards mental illness like Stoecklein admitted, and would not question Stoecklein’s lack of actions towards Andrew. They might also see her calling him selfish, dramatic when having a panic attack, and praying over him as a necessary course of action. The people with the same views as Stoecklein would be able to sympathize with her more, unlike someone like me, who cringed at her actions. I do not believe that everything could be fixed by praying. The type of readers that would read the story would not question her but view her as a good wife. Yet, few would question her good intentions and wonder if she was masking her mistakes to keep her image perfect the way she wanted it to be. Throughout the story, she was strict on perfection and complained multiple times that her ‘perfect’ life was gone after Andrew died. That could raise a question of ethics because Stoecklein tried to cover up what she said and did to Andrew and not take fault for the things that she lacked in, such as believing in him and showing him compassion. 

I would not call this a terrible novel because I have different opinions. But, I do question the author and the way she handled the situation in general as she seemed to deeply care about her perfect image more than to fix her mistakes. 

Codes of Faith

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. 

Stoecklein Family

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. 

Complications in the Semic Code

I’ve struggled with reading our last book. Fear Gone Wild by Kayla Stoecklin is a nonfiction-memoir where Stoecklin narrates her husband’s mental decline and eventual suicide. She struggles to understand how these events came to happen, her life seemed perfect, why would her God do this to her family? Kayla grew up as a Christian woman and married a Christian man, Andrew, who eventually took on the position of pastor in his family’s church. 

I grew up attending church, going to Sunday School, and even receiving Confirmation. After that, I drifted away from religion and my relationship with it is waning. It was difficult for me to submit to the narrative of this novel, and allow myself to sit in the chair that Fear Gone Wild offers. I have a close relationship with mental illness, especially depression, anxiety, and suicide– the major aspects that drive the psychological aspect of this narrative. So, I can submit to parts of this novel, and it’s been an interesting experience. And it’s made writing this blog and understanding the methods through this novel difficult. 

It took me a long time, and a lot of rambling and note-taking, to come to a draft of the controlling idea. Currently, I’ve been working with the following controlling idea, Standing true in one’s faith will absolve all challenges.  And then the following counter idea, When challenged with difficulties, if one loses their faith they will crumble and suffer. When I look at them together, I see how they make sense, but they don’t feel finished. 

Let me explain them anyway. Starting with the counter idea, Stoecklin writes the narrative reflectively. There is the before Andrew’s death and the after where there is an obvious sense of learning from the narrator. In the before, Stoecklin writes about how she understood depression in the past, “I thought people with depression had a flair for the dramatic. I dumbed down depression as an excuse for laziness” (43). She let her religion teach her that depression was for people who weren’t really trying to be happy or healthy. Of course, this mentality changes. 

Then we look at the more reflective language that surrounds the controlling idea. Here, she is able to combine religion and her experiences with mental health to alter how she teaches religion. And this becomes her call to action and her purpose to write this memoir, to bring others into the perspective of mental illness and out of the prejudices and stereotypes. She very much wants to play with the rhetoric of narrative, pulling the ideal narrative audience out of the hole of the counter idea and into the light of the controlling idea. 

So what about the controlling idea and counter idea, who cares? Well, this is where genre starts to take shape. Here we’re dealing with a memoir where the narrator is not only telling a story from a major part of their life and having some call to action for readers, but it is highly reflective for the narrator. Stoecklin talks about who she was before, before she met Andrew, before his dad had cancer, before Andrew’s mental health declined, before, before, before. And these moments aren’t pretty, they don’t always paint her in an angelic glow of the doting wife. But she’s human for that and she reflects on her actions. 

In one instance, she is woken up by Andrew frantically pacing at the end of their bed in the middle of the night. He confesses that he thinks he’s having a panic attack. Stoecklin does her best to console her husband, trying to offer things to help calm him down; nonetheless, she can’t help but think, “In my exhaustion I just wanted him to stop being ‘so dramatic’ and lie back down” (20). At this moment, their family is young with young children and parenthood is exhausting. While her husband is suffering in his own way, it isn’t wrongfully selfish for Stoecklin to wish that she could go back to sleep. And she admits this. 

There’s something interesting that Fear Gone Wild does that is surprising. There are these small, almost thoughts written quickly down on paper, that read like these small poems. They begin on page 33 with one that repeats “Maybe” at the start of each line, where the lines expand in length. Then again on 47, with the repetition of “I have no idea”, at the end of 67 repeating “inhale” and “exhale,” 74 with each line ending in a question. And it keeps going throughout the novel. Each poem becomes this little seme that creates an element of the semic code. 

This code, as understood by Kaja Silverman, “represents the major device for thematizing persons, objects, or places” (251). So what are these poems doing? What are they adding to the semic code? What even is the semic code? Well, through the poems the reader enters Stoecklin’s inner thoughts. The drabbles and the hurt and the raw emotion that she feels as she watches her husband wither before her and as she also has to survive through all of this. The repetition within the poems reinforces how lost and conflicted she feels as we go through the narrative. These are her unfiltered, cathartic, thoughts. 
An ugly image starts to form as I read on and encounter these little drabbles. While they create the seme of her pain in all of this, it’s her pain. The entire narrative, whether reflective or not, is through Stoecklin’s eyes. Everything the reader knows about Andrew is created by what she writes. Are things exaggerated? Is she exploiting her husband in all her writing of this novel? Is there an issue brewing in the point of view that this book is written in, I’m starting to believe so. I almost want to ask, why is she really writing this book, is it to serve this mission of blending religion and mental health awareness? Probably. But I think there’s more lurking behind it all. Fear Gone Wild may not be my first pick for some personal, mimetic reading. But Stoecklin offers an insightful perspective into what happens when your relationship with religion is usurped by an unexpected impact of mental illness.

Good Intentions Are Not Enough

I find myself in the position where I am finally the one creating a first blog for a book, the book that I chose all the way back at the beginning of the semester. That book is Fear Gone Wild: A Story of Mental Illness, Suicide, and Hope Through Loss by Kayla Stoecklein. Much like the other books that my group has read over the course of the semester, as it says in the title, the main focus will be on mental illness. I chose this book for a couple of reasons, not only has depression and suicide had a major impact on my life, but there is one thing that differentiates this book when compared to the other two that are focused on mental illness. That is the fact that this perspective is coming from someone who isn’t the direct victim of the mental illness itself and because of that, we as the readers are getting an outsider’s look into the issue and we get to see the impact of how mental illness affects not just the victim but those around them.

In the case of Fear Gone Wild, it is Stoecklein’s memoir of her depressed husband whom she had lost to suicide. She recounts the times when they were together that led up to his eventual death, where she looks back in hindsight to see how she could have better helped him. She hopes that her story will be able to touch those who struggle from depression themselves, and provide support for those who have to cope with the disruptions mental illness in their loved ones bring. 

WIth her story, she attempts to show how turning to religion can help those with depression. While it may not be everyone’s first choice, turning to faith can help build happiness for some and may help with the treatment of one’s own depression. She tries to show this by showing how she and her husband attempt to turn in that direction to see if it would help him. It wasn’t enough to help Andrew, but it is still an approach to helping someone who is depressed.

To better understand her message and her story, I would have to understand what her controlling idea is. A controlling idea, according to McKee, is “expressed in a single sentence describing how and why life undergoes change from one condition of existence at the beginning to another at the end” (115). It is like a web of themes that drive the story from beginning to end. For Fear Gone Wild, it would be centered around Andrew and his mental illness.

However, there is also the counter idea, also a conjunction of themes by McKee. From the way that the counter idea is described: “you have to build a bridge of story from the opening to the ending, a progression of events that spans from Premise to Controlling Idea. These events echo the contradictory voices of one theme. Sequence by sequence, often scene by scene, the positive idea and its negative Counter Idea argue, so to speak, back and forth, creating a dramatized dialectical debate” (119). This means that throughout the narrative, the reader will be given positive and negative charges from the story. Both of which will determine how the events of the story play out, with one or the other being the overall winner.

The controlling idea for Fear Gone Wild would be how Andrew could have turned to religion in order to be treated. Kayla believes that this is a legitimate method for treating someone who is depressed, and that putting faith in someone’s life might end up making them happier. With that, she and Andrew spent a lot of time turning to religious texts to figure out what he can do to fight his inner demons. 

There is also the counter idea. That also has to do with Andrew turning to religion to treat his depression, however it takes a different approach. One could argue that turning to religion is what could have weakened Andrew’s resolve to keep living. In the end, the fight with his inner demons became too much, and the religious texts wouldn’t be making it better in the slightest. That impractical approach could be what contributed to his suicide. 

Both the controlling idea and the counter idea have charges, the controlling idea a positive charge, the counter idea the negative charge. These ideas are intended to debate over the course of the story until one is proven right at the end. These positive and negative charges can work hand in hand to form the story, or in this case, the events that lead to Andrew’s suicide.

To showcase a controlling idea, Kayla attempts to show how Andrew was seeking help for himself. Of course he was getting medication, seeking professional help, but he had also decided to turn to religion for help as well. “On paper we were doing everything we knew to create space for Andrew’s healing. He was seeing the psychiatrist biweekly, and we were seeing the counselor together for two hours every week. He was also seeing a wellness doctor, who recommended numerous vitamins and supplements to boost his energy and increase his overall health. He was getting plenty of rest in his “cave,” and he was working out every single day to rebuild muscle and regain strength. He would also occasionally retreat to the desert or the mountains to be alone with God, and sometimes the boys and I would join him. We did not want to squander his sabbatical; we took the time seriously. We were a team” (56). While it is helpful for someone with depression to seek a therapist and get medication to treat their mental illness. None of it is going to really help unless the depressed person tries to help themselves as well. For Andrew, Kayla believed that the way he could help himself was through religion. It is a legitimate hobby as any, and it can help those to cope. However, that doesn’t mean that Andrew is out of the woods yet, there is still the counter idea. 

To showcase a counter idea from within the story, here Kayla herself doesn’t seem to be helpful at times when it comes to treating her husband’s depression. In fact, there are times where she turns to religion and just makes the situation worse. “‘What do you mean a ‘creature’? Andrew, what are you talking about? There isn’t anything in the shower. You were the only one in here; I don’t understand.’ He started crying again and shaking. I wasn’t helping. I was making it worse. So I did the only thing I knew to do—I prayed. ‘God, I don’t know what’s going on, but I pray your presence would overwhelm this room right now. Whatever Andrew saw, I pray in the name of Jesus for it to leave; it has no power here. In Jesus’ mighty name, amen.’” (72). This is an instance where Andrew describes his own inner demons as something that is physical. I am able to at least discern that much from what he said, however Kayla not so much. This isn’t the first time that she is seen to be incapable of helping Andrew and instead clings to her religion hoping that it was enough to get him through his pain. She wasn’t always there for him emotionally at times because of how often she turned to religion as an answer and that did nothing but hurt Andrew in the long run.

This doesn’t just stop however with the way she is reckless with her husband. There are times throughout the story where she describes her husband in mental anguish and rather than focusing on trying to heal the pain, she turns around to make it about herself. She tries to describe how she was in pain at the moment, as if her husband’s negative energy was affecting her. It is surprisingly selfish of her to have thoughts like this in a book that is meant to call awareness to the affects mental illness and suicide has on the individual and those around them. 

I understand how the controlling idea has a positive charge and how the counter idea has a negative charge. These ideas are easy to identify once one learns how to look for them. Normally, it would be hard to determine which of the two ideas would win by the end of the story, however since this is a non-fictional memoir, I already have a pretty good idea of which idea is going to come out on top in the end. Regardless, I had made a graph of the general events of the story that display the positive and negative charges of the story, the controlling and counter ideas.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that in a memoir of a suicide victim that the negative charges should outnumber the positive. After all, I can’t help but see that the counter idea does seem to be more valid in the case of Andrew and Kayla. 

While I said earlier that turning to religion is a legitimate way for people with depression to cope in their own way. This story serves as a cautionary tale that it should not become an emotional crutch for someone to use when someone like Andrew seeks help. I have no doubt that Kayla has good intentions with her story and that she does love her husband. However, I can’t help but look back to all of the times where she was really careless with the way she treated Andrew. 

There are multiple times where Andrew is the one who is in deep pain, and yet Kayla makes it all about herself. When Andrew is diagnosed with depression, she is in disbelief at the possibility of that, and doesn’t even recognize her husband at that moment in her own words. It is times like this when Andrew has to get it together so that he can comfort his wife. However, it should be happening the other way around. She should be the one there for him, he is the one suffering from the mental illness.

This doesn’t even mention the fact that when Andrew’s pain is too much for her to deal with, she simply says a prayer out loud as if that will help her husband in his anguish. In the end, Kayla has good intentions with how she tries to make this story a call to awareness about mental illness, and a way to help those who are struggling themselves. But I can recommend it in the sense that it is simply a call to awareness and nothing else. I just can’t recommend what she would do to help her husband in his time of need, and while it is good of her to try to find hope after her loss. A lot of Andrew’s pain could have been prevented if she had simply not paid so much attention to herself.