Schizophrene Kapil Analysis

Schizophrene, by Bhanu Kapil, focuses on the Partition of India and the widespread lasting effect it had over the mental health and physical safety of citizens. Kapil focuses on schizophrenia, writing about the speaker’s immigrant experience through that lens. In Schizophrene, Bhanu Kapil uses aspects such as color to symbolize emotion, a distant tone, and showcases psychological and physical displacement. By using these methods to signify the speaker’s feeling towards aspects of her experience, Kapil showcases the unique perspective of a schizophrenic. This perspective portrays the schizophrenic as a distant onlooker in a distinctive immigrant experience. Kapil writes “Do psychiatrists register the complex and rich vibrations produced by …show more content…
This provides the reader with a clearer view of how the speaker perceives her experiences, showing the disturbances in thought and lack of meaning directly associated with a certain part. Though recollection of an experiences such as an immigrant’s journey usually flow in the form of a narrative, Kapil rejects that, focusing less on telling a story for the sake of stating facts and more on emphasizing the trauma and isolation she felt through snippets of thoughts. For example, shortly after speaking about her mother telling her about the trauma experienced due to the Partition, the speaker states, “12:20 on the third day; notes from the glass coffin. Schizophrene. Because it is psychotic not to know where you are in a national space. (41) Though both parts of this quote don’t have a direct connection, and neither connect to the part written before, Kapil is still able to depict that immigrants struggle to find themselves in both their old and new homes through the last part of this quote. As said by the speaker, “Fragments attract each other” (22). The fragmented writing style and thought process of the schizophrenic speaker that Kapil utilizes shows a unique perspective of the immigrant