Quotations/Literary Terms

1) "Every window on Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco" (6). This is an example of an allusion because she feels as if she is in a prison. It alludes to the fact that on Alcatraz every woindow can see the outside world of San Fransisco. This is comparible to the fact that the windows of McLean Hospital all show a view of the outside world of Boston, MA.

2) "And somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth" (17). This is an example of a similie. Susanna is talking about suicide.

3) "50 asprin is a lot of asprin, but going onto the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the draw" (17). This is Susanna talking about her own attempt of suicide, using a simile.

4) "We might get out sometime, but she was locked up forever in that body" (19). This is an example of an allusion because she is describing Polly and how she is stuck with her burnt body forever.

5) "The fifty aspirin-- But I've explained them. They were metaphorical. I wanted to get rid of a certain aspect of my character. I was performing a kind of self abortion with those aspirin. It worked for a while. Then it stopped, but I had no heart to try again". (39)
Susanna used her attempted suicide as a metaphor to purge herself of the things she did not like. After her abortion she felt somehwat better but this feeling soon faded, and her suicidal thoughts returned.

6) "Polly was walking like a motorized corpse" (23)
The author uses a simile to describe Polly's actions and personality towards life after her attempted suicide.

7) "Something had been peeled back, a covering or shell that works to protect us. I couldn't decide whether the covering was something on me or something attached to everything in the world. It didn't matter, really; wherever it had been, it wasn't there anymore" (42).
The author uses this layer as an allusion to the covers they use to hide their faults.

8) "It's as if she spent her life in a closet" (112).
The author used a simile to describe the isolated life of a patient.

9) "Although you can make yourself dizzy going from vase to faces and back again, you can't undermine your sense of reality in quite such a visceral way as you can with the train" (140).
The author uses a simile to describe the brain facing with reality compared with a train.

10) "Interpreter 1: There's a tiger in the corner.
Interpreter 2: No, that's not a tiger- that's a bureau.
Interpreter 1: It's a tiger, it's a tiger!
Interpreter 2: Don't be ridiculous. Let's go look at it" (139).
The author uses an example of borderline personality disorder in dialouge to show two sides of the mind and having trouble deciding which side is reality.

11) "Her skin was like an accordion; it kept expanding, more and more, until she was holding the flap of skin a foot away from her body" (164).
The author uses a simile to describe Lisa after she had kids.

12) "You ever think of that place?" (164)
The author uses irony to describe that Lisa is living an ordinary life after being in McLean hospital for a long time. Also, she was known as the craziest. When Lisa sees Susanna all she asks is if Susanna ever thinks of it.

13) "First their wonderful smell: They smelled of laundry, clean and hot and slightly electrified, like warmed wiring. Then the temperature: eighty at a minimum, and this when it was thirty-three outside, probably twenty-five with windchill (though in the innocent sixties, windchill, like digital time, hadn't yet been discovered). Their quavery yellow light, their long yellow-tiled walls and barrel-vaulted ceilings, their forks and twists and roads not taken, whose yellow openings beckoned like shiny open mouths. Here and there, on white tiles embedded in the yellow, were signposts: cafeteria, administration, east house" (120).
The author uses imagery to describe the tunnels in the hospital. Susanna becomes obsessed with the tunnels and always visited them.

14) "The rooms were not really rooms. They were cells. They were seclusion rooms, in fact. There wasn't anything in them except bare mattresses with people on them. Unlike our seclusion room, they had windows, but the windows were tiny, high, chicken-wire-enforced, security-screened, barred windows. Most of the doors to the rooms were open, so as we walked down the hall to see Alice, we could see other people lying on their mattresses. Some were naked. Some were not on their mattresses but standing in a corner or curled up against a wall" (113).
The author uses imagery to describe the secluded cells at McLean Hospital. These are the cells people go in when they can barely function, while security watches them at all times.

15) "My legs felt like mattresses, they were so huge and dense" (104).
The author uses a simile to describe how Susanna felt after Valerie gave her Thorazine.

16) "It didn't look special from the outside. It didn't even have extra doors. But inside it was different. The windows had screens like our windows, but there were bars in front of the screens. Little bars, thin and several inches apart, still, they were bars. The bathrooms had no doors, and the toilets had no seats" (113).
The author uses imagery to describe the secluded cells that Alice stays in.

17) "Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can't go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside" (95).
The author uses a simile to describe how patients in the hospital are like designated hitters within a family.

18) "I banged the inside, where the veins converge. It swelled and turned a bit blue, but considering how hard and how much I banged it, the visible damage was slight" (153).
The author uses imagery to describe Susanna's wrist-banging. She did it instead of cutting her wrists, to feel pain.

19) "I spent hours in my butterfly chair banging my wrist. I did it in the evenings, like homework" (153).
The author uses a simile to describe that it was like a duty for Susanna to bang her wrist. Wrist-banging became part of her schedule.

20) "The idea of suicide worked on me like a purgative or a cathartic" (158).
The author uses a simile to describe Susanna's suicidal thoughts.