Analysis Of Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted

Writing in someone else 's style is infinitely more difficult than simply writing as yourself. After all, a style of writing represents that author 's thought process, and it is quite difficult to get into the heads of others. In addition, we had to replicate the style of not one, but two very characteristic writers with very different styles and visions for their work. Changing mindsets was slightly difficult; just when I became accustomed to Kaysen 's style, I had to finish with her and change to Flynn. Granted, they have some similarities, but the two authors were still wildly different and it was difficult rapidly changing between them. Susanna Kaysen 's style in Girl, Interrupted is characterized by its simplicity in both the choice …show more content…
Those two are, however, the most profusely used words in Girl, Interrupted. For the previous example, Kaysen could have written “And after that? I whispered” and have Georgiana reply “A lot of darkness, she muttered.” and convey an emotion of fear in their conversation. Her style of writing, however, gives readers the opportunity to fill in the blanks themselves and paint her line-art of words with their own emotional colors. In addition to the lack of description, most sentences in the story are simple sentences modified with one or two quick adverbs, and the remaining are more likely than not to be two simple sentences combined with a simple conjunction such as “and” or “but”. Often there are several simple sentences with the same subject, for example on pages 16-17: “ She was never unhappy. She was kind and comforting to those who were unhappy. She never complained. She always had time to listen to other people 's complains.” The author could have easily combined these simple sentences into a longer, more complex one, but her decision to write this way, in combination with the lack of description, gave the story a choppier, more blunt, more emotionless tone that was appropriate for the setting and the