Girl, Interrupted

Kaysen uses the image of packaged meat to represent her own emotional pain and feelings of confinement. She explains that when she fainted in the grocery store the last thing that she saw was packaged meat. After she survived this experience, she was repulsed by meat, and became a vegetarian. She attributes this to the fact that both she and the meat were “bruised, bleeding, and imprisoned in a tight wrapping” (42).

Kaysen’s metaphor comparing herself to meat starkly explains her attitude and detachment toward herself that led to her attempted suicide. The image of meat is conjured throughout the memoir further as patients burn themselves, searing skin, and when Kaysen participates in self-harm. She describes her compulsion of wrist-banging as “slow, steady, mindless” as if she is tenderizing herself like one tenderizes meat for consumption (139).

Kaysen explains that part of her confusion as a teen had to do with feeling irritated and anxious about patterns, such as on rugs, curtains, or tile floors. She explains that in addition to her imagining different things within the patterns, she also felt anxious about the contrasts that patterns forced her to think about. For Kaysen, patterns represented opposing forces in life.