Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Illness
Storytelling, Memory, and Emotion
Love and Family
Responsibility and the Medical System
Summary
Analysis
Susannah explains to the reader that Dad begins keeping a personal journal to track Susannah's developments and help himself cope. From this journal, Susannah recounts Dad's description of taking the elevator, describing the happy or downtrodden people that got off at every other floor. Once on the epilepsy floor, he heads for Susannah's new, private room, but another patient calls him to her. The woman is obviously paranoid and speaks about being monitored. She gives Dad a phone number.
As Dad describes his elevator ride, he makes it clear that the hospital isn't just a place of terror and sadness. The hospital can be a place of happiness and healing, and mentioning this offers him hope that Susannah will also heal, and the hospital won't just be a dark place in his own experience.
Themes
When Dad enters Susannah's room, he runs into the new security guard. Susannah greets Dad warmly and agrees to a walk around the floor. The walk is difficult, as Susannah walks as though she's learning to do so for the first time. When they return to her room, Dad suggests a motto to her. He says that the slope of a line is positive, which means progress.
Suggesting a motto like this allows Dad to feel as though he has some control over the situation, and alludes to the power that language and storytelling has. By describing progress like this, Dad hopes to manifest a “happy ending” in real life.
Themes
By this point, Susannah's psychosis is mostly gone. The hospital schedules a spinal tap to collect cerebrospinal fluid now that she's a willing patient. Most of the time, Susannah stares off into space. When she is lucid, she asks Dad to let her leave because the hospital is killing her. Both Mom and Dad hide their desperation from their friends and coworkers.
Again, while the receding psychosis might seem like progress at first glance, what replaces it is almost more terrifying. It's also worth noting that Susannah’s symptoms are scary in part because they're not something that the doctors can explain.
Themes
When a young orderly arrives to collect Susannah for her spinal tap, he cheerfully tries to engage Dad in conversation in the elevator. Dad is angry when the orderly asks if Susannah has epilepsy, and then the orderly silently and awkwardly wheels Susannah into the waiting area.
Here, rejecting a diagnosis allows Dad to take some control of Susannah's identity and the words used to describe her, though doing so doesn't seem to have much of a helpful effect otherwise.
Themes
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