{"id":183,"date":"2019-01-25T09:16:46","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T14:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/?p=183"},"modified":"2019-01-25T09:16:46","modified_gmt":"2019-01-25T14:16:46","slug":"the-unreliability-of-merry-confusion-or-simply-lack-of-basic-knowledge-surrounding-her-sisters-mental-disorder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/2019\/01\/25\/the-unreliability-of-merry-confusion-or-simply-lack-of-basic-knowledge-surrounding-her-sisters-mental-disorder\/","title":{"rendered":"The unreliability of Merry: confusion or simply lack of basic knowledge surrounding her sister&#8217;s mental disorder?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Paul Tremblay\u2019s, <em>A Head Full of Ghosts<\/em>, the narrator Merry takes us on a journey, describing the day-to-day interactions with her older sister Marjorie. We begin the novel by first viewing Merry, 15 years after \u201ceverything happened\u201d, about to tell her story to a novelist (8). Right from the first few pages, the thing that stood out to me the most was Merry\u2019s confusion and her unreliability as a narrator. Merry even outright states that all of the nightmares, fabrications, media, etc, \u201chopelessly jumbles up what I knew and what I know now\u201d (13).<\/p>\n<p>8 years old at the start of her narration, it is obvious that something is going on with Marjorie and that Merry does not know anything. Throughout the first 60 pages, we can see Merry\u2019s development as she slowly begins to notice Marjorie\u2019s strange behaviors. From the eerie twist on the molasses explosion in Boston to Marjorie\u2019s note about holding Merry\u2019s nose in her sleep to finally to the manic episode in Chapter 9, Merry realizes that something is wrong with Marjorie, however, she has no idea what. Her confusion is reasonable \u2013 what 8 year old would recognize the signs of a severe mental disorder in her older sister that she reveres so much? Her parents certainly do not disclose any information. When Merry asks her mother what happened at Marjorie\u2019s doctor appointment, her mother responded that nothing did and thus gave her \u201clicense to imagine all manner of doctor\u2019s office horrors\u201d (45).<\/p>\n<p>The notion that mental disorders are taboo is incredibly apparent in this section of the novel, and quite frankly, mirrors society\u2019s thoughts as well. Today, many people have mental disorders, and yet, most people are not open to discussing them in order to learn more information and erase the stigma. Instead, like Marjorie\u2019s situation, everything is kept very secretive and as a result, Merry is kept in the dark. So, I have to wonder: does Merry\u2019s confusion come from the fact that she was 8 years old at the time of Marjorie\u2019s mental degradation or the fact that the rest of her family would not disclose any information and thus Merry was left to rationalize the situation by turning to other sources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Paul Tremblay\u2019s, A Head Full of Ghosts, the narrator Merry takes us on a journey, describing the day-to-day interactions with her older sister Marjorie. We begin the novel by first viewing Merry, 15 years after \u201ceverything happened\u201d, about to tell her story to a novelist (8). Right from the first few pages, the thing &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":234,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-b"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paB9Ga-2X","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}