Spark Notes: Girl, Interrupted

The book goes into Kaysan's hospitalization for two years and discusses the baby boomers and how the culture was changing around that time, especially in relation to the war in Vietnam. This amounted to cultural shock for older people (and the death of innocent students at Kent State.)

This resulted in a difficult some doctors in the group that worked with young people in mental institutions had in relating to their patients. They were coming from a different culture than the young people.

The Plot Overview then goes into the various main characters in the book, including Polly (the girl with the burns), Lisa (the rather wild girl at times), Georginia (the girl that shared Kaysan's room) and Daisy (the girl with the chicken carcasses in her room.)

The book discusses the prejudice against those who mental patients and how she had trouble finding a job after leaving the institution.

The book then goes into a character list which generally fell into the categories of depression, self-abuse and drug use although Daisy was sexually abused by her father.

The book points out that noncomformity is not the same thing as mental illness.

Symbols are discussed and the question of just how long Kaysan's meeting with the doctor that resulted with her being put into the institution went. The book also explains important quotations, key facts and then moves into a section that could be used in a classroom. This consists of study questions and essay topics and a 25 question multiple choice quiz.

(Which brings up something interesting. Some schools are no longer giving students textbooks, possibly as a money-saving procedure. In my opinion, as a former teacher, that's a pretty dumb move since the students are supposed to be improving their reading scores on national tests yet they are given less to actually read in school.

If there would be some way the students could be loaned something like Kindles then there are a whole lot of books like this one that could be used in the classroom, in this case probably a psychology classroom.)

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