Discussion Question (2)

Does Susanna think she is insane? Do you think she is insane?

Susanna goes back and forth in thinking whether she is crazy or not. At one point she is referring to herself and the others as "lunatics" and at another she is rationalizing her crazy thoughts ["it is easy to slip into a parallel universe" (5)].
However, when she states: "Once I'd accepted that, it followed that I might be mad, or that someone might think me mad. How could I say for certain that I wasn't, if I couldn't say for certain that a curtain wasn't a mountain range?" (42) one can really see that Susanna is definitely having trouble distinguishing reality from imaginary. Therefore, I believe that Susanna thinks she is slightly insane, why else would she have stayed in the hospital for so long?

As for me, I don't really consider Borderline Personality disorder as insanity. However, when Susanna describes these hallucinations that she often has, it makes me think that maybe there is something else irking her mental health. An official disorder is defined as something that disrupts one's everyday living, and to classify Susanna considering that definition, yes, Susanna is insane.