I Know This Much Is True
This is an excerpt from the paper...
Wally Lamb's novel I Know This Much Is True is an exploration of both a condition and a person and how the two can be seen in terms of each other. The long, not entirely cohesive work tells the story of Dominick Birdsey, who is the protagonist and antihero of the novel. He is a man split off from normal life by emotional scarring and anger and by the schizophrenia of his brother. The term was until recently loosely translated as "split personality", and although this is in fact a relatively inaccurate description of the condition, Lamb plays with the idea of this split personality by giving to Dominick an identical twin, a person from who he split off in utero, although just barely, and who mirrors for him now his own inner tortures. Both of the twins have been abused, and the miseries of childhood have left Dominick, who works as a housepainter, emotionally unavailable. His brother's paranoid schizophrenia - which tends to express itself in terms of public mutilation - has certainly been exacerbated by their treatment as children when the brothers were raised by a brutal grandfather, a grandmother who may have murdered someone in her own youth and a stepfather who is a sadist. And while Dominick's brother Thomas may participate in more publicly dramatic acts of madness, Dominick himself is none too stable, with a history of rape, a disastrous marriage, a messy car crash and a neo-fascist conspiracy. The book is about these two men but it is in many ways far more about th
. . .
they are experiencing symptoms of the illness. This inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy is known as psychosis and the core symptoms of schizophrenia are often displayed by psychotic behavior (http://www.cognitivetherapynyc.com/schizophrenia.html).
Thomas is certainly capable of demonstrating highly psychotic behavior, for his form of the disease is serious. Schizophrenia varies in intensity both from person to person as well as from time to time.
The severity of schizophrenia varies from person to person, with some patients having only one or a few episodes of the illness and others experiencing continuous symptoms. Most people with schizophrenia experience considerable difficulties in their interpersonal relationships, in caring for personal needs, in working, and in living independently (http://www.cognitivetherapynyc.com/schizophrenia.html).
One major fault with the book is that it focuses to such a large extent on the affective (i.e. the emotional) elements of schizophrenia and overlooks the cognitive aspects of the disorder. To understand why this is important - both in terms of understanding schizophrenia and in terms of understanding what would have made the novel even more compelling -it is important
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Dominick's Thomas, Clark Fairburn, Dominick Birdsey, Wally Lamb's, Fairburn CG, University Dalgliesh, Muylings HB, Science Unsworth, Wiley Sons, reality fantasy, 2000 cognition, cognition includes, psychotic behavior, schizophrenia varies, person person, split personality, paranoid schizophrenia, own inner, include perception, London Clarendon,
Approximate Word count = 1313
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
More Essays on I Know This Much Is True
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
