Nurses on the psychiatric ward perform checks at intervals of five, fifteen, or thirty minutes throughout the day, peeking into patients’ rooms to check on them and make sure that no one is harming themselves or anyone else. Good behavior is rewarded with longer intervals between checks, but most of Susanna’s fellow patients have their days and sense of time “murdered” by nearly-nonstop five-minute checks.
Checks Quotes in Girl, Interrupted
The Girl, Interrupted quotes below are all either spoken by Checks or refer to Checks. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 14
Quotes
Swish, click. Before you knew it, she'd be back. Click, swish, "Checks," swish, click.
It never stopped, even at night; it was our lullaby. It was our metronome, our pulse. It was our lives measured out in doses slightly larger than those famous coffee spoons. Soup spoons, maybe? Dented tin spoons brimming with what should have been sweet but was sour, gone off, gone by without our savoring it: our lives.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Girl, Interrupted LitChart as a printable PDF.
Checks Term Timeline in Girl, Interrupted
The timeline below shows where the term Checks appears in Girl, Interrupted. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 14: Checks
Checks, a system of surveillance in which nurses open the doors of patients’ rooms and slip...
(full context)
