She's Come Undone

In She’s Come Undone the main character Dolores, cycles through depression throughout her life. Not only did she have her own struggle with a mental illness her mom also struggled. Seeing her mother struggle with the depths of depression could have played a factor in Dolores’s own struggle with depression. In my Psychology class we often talked about how depression was not only influenced by the environment but also by genetic factors. In the article Genetic Causes, it states “Just because a person inherits a gene that predisposes him or her to a depressive illness, it does not mean that he or she is destined to develop major depression or bipolar disorder. It is believed that a genetic influence is only partially responsible for causing depression. Other factors may also play a role.”  (http://www.allaboutdepression.com/cau_03.html) I thought it was interesting that the author, Wally Lamb, used not only environmental influences that played a role in Dolores’s depression but that her mom had it also showing that maybe she had a genetic predisposition towards it.

The theme that I thought fits this book well is effects from the past. Dolores had started out as a normal child and then events just keep happening, that I believe would have traumatized any child and altered the way they went about their life. First Dolores’s parent’s divorced and she felt completely abandoned by her dad. Not long after they divorced her mom ended up in a mental hospital that resulted in her having to live with her grandma. It didn’t stop there though she was raped by the upstairs neighbor Jack Speight, the poor girl just couldn’t catch a break. The consequences or changes that resulted from these things had a great impact on her life, she even went to great lengths to keep these things hidden so that no one would know. One of the most prominent pieces of the book that stands out to me that goes with effects from the past is when Dante touches Dolores in a sexual way for the first time. Dolores said “his hand reached down and touched my foot. I bolted up straight in bed. “Stop it!” I told him. “Don’t”.” (314) She was immediately taken back to that night with Jack, something that still affected her even though it had happened years before.  

My Friend Dahmer

I always thought that serial killers were people who were extremely disturbed, people who drew pictures of killing someone, or even talking about how they would like to kill a person. I also thought that they would be violent from a young age, taking joy in harming someone.

I would have probably felt the same way that Dahmer’s friends did, they always thought he was a little odd and different but attributed it to his home life. His friends thought he drank just to drown out the pain of his parents constant fighting, but I think it is more than that; he may have wanted to get away from the thoughts of murdering someone.

 It’s crazy to think that there is a possibility that people we see daily, may even call some of them our friends, could possibly be a serial killer. My Friend Dahmer, just goes to show that serial killers can be those kids who are a little different and seem to do weird things for attention, like Dahmer mocking his mother’s interior designer and even his own mother. Dahmer didn’t seem disturbed in the sense that he was going to kill people even though he had killed animals he never mentioned harming others to anyone.

 I’m not sure if there is a right way to reach out to someone before they kill someone if it is a case like Dahmer’s. But, it could be possible to help those who are mentally ill seek the proper kind of help.  https://www.mentalhealth.gov/get-help/, This website has some great info on seeking mental help. You can find out what mental health is, what to look for, and how to talk about it.

I think people don’t always reach an obvious breaking point. Dahmer’s life was definitely far from normal and the severity of his condition wasn’t obvious to those around him until later when they could look back on it; hindsight is always 20/20! I think someone’s human condition can be so different from others and we never know exactly what makes a person think or act the way that they do.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, By Sherman Alexie

I would say that this book definitely changed my perspective a little on mental illness. I think it’s clear that at some points throughout his life that Junior struggled with depression. For example, after the deaths of his Grandma and Eugene he said “I was joyless. I mean, I can’t even tell you how I found the strength to get up every morning. And yet, every morning, I did get up and go to school. Well, no, that’s not exactly true. I was so depressed that I thought about dropping out of Reardan.” (Alexie, 173) I would say it was completely normal for him to be depressed given the circumstances.

One thing that I did see throughout the book was Junior always talking about how everyone he knew was an alcoholic he said “I know only, like, five Indians in our tribe who have never drunk alcohol. And my grandmother was one of them.” (Alexie, 158) I never saw alcohol as possibly a mental illness so I wanted to know a little more about it and did some research. The article Why is Alcoholism Classified As a Mental Illness? (http://www.hazeldenbettyford.org/articles/why-is-alcoholism-classified-as-a-mental-illness) Says “Alcoholism is classified as a substance abuse disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III). Mental and emotional symptoms of alcoholism exist long before the grave physical complications of the disease appear.” I guess I’ve always felt the way that Juniors grandma did when she said “Why would I want to be in the world if I couldn’t touch the world with all of my senses intact?” (Alexie, 158). I still kind of view Alcoholism as a coping method for some other kind of mental illnesses like say depression, if you are “numb” to the pain and you can get it without having to talk about your feelings, then why not?