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.