Understanding Schizophrenic hallucinations through the first-person fiction of Nathan Filer’s The Shock of the Fall and Patrick McGrath’s Spider

Graye, Sarah Marie

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Kent Academic RepositoryFull text document (pdf)Copyright & reuseContent in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated allcontent is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of researchThe version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.EnquiriesFor any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: researchsupport@kent.ac.ukIf you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.htmlCitation for published versionGraye, Sarah Marie   (2021) All the Sights, Sounds and Smells.   . The Antonym Magazine  Internetarticle.DOILink to record in KARhttps://kar.kent.ac.uk/88777/Document VersionPublisher pdfAll the Sights, Sounds andSmells – Sarah MarieGrayeJun 19, 2021 | Bookworm | 0 commentsR E A D I N G  T I M E :  5  M I N  (  W O R D  C O U N T :  1 0 8 3  )336 pages St. Martin’s Gri n Published 2015227 pages Gallimard EducationPublished 2002 Understanding Schizophrenic hallucinations through the  rst-person  ction of Nathan Filer’s The Shock of the Fall and PatrickMcGrath’s SpiderIn medicine, there is a search for one particular answer: the truth. There is nosuch restriction in  ction. This distinction means  ction is allowed to forge arepresentation of mental health symptoms – such as what it is like to live withSchizophrenia – without having to prove they are accurate.Fiction writing is able to stretch itself to  t around the various ideas of what amental health condition is. Both The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer and inSpider by Patrick McGrath, are  rst-person  ction novels where the narratorsu ers from Schizophrenia – and both use the tool of unreliable narrator to playwith the rules of  ction writing so that the reader can witness the disintegrationof the mind of the su erer, but not so much that the reader can no longer followthe narrative.Published in 2013, The Shock of the Fall won the Costa Book Awards and achieveda level of commercial success that Spider, published in 1990, did not. However,much can be gained from reviewing the books together.The key di erence is that Filer’s protagonist Matthew Homes acknowledges hismental health issues, whereas Dennis Cleg (McGrath’s protagonist, who goes bythe nickname Spider) does not. But even with this distinction, the reader soonlearns they cannot trust everything that either narrator tells them.The unreliable narrator Matthew tells us: “There is weather and there is climate.If it rains outside, or if you stab a classmate’s shoulder with a compass needle,over and over, until his white cotton school shirt looks like blotting paper, that isthe weather.” (Filer 2013, 67) His story begins normally, talking about weather, climate and rain. But then herelates stabbing a classmate to also being the weather, which is absurd – and thereis no warning when his narration will switch between normal and nonsensical. When Spider explains his mother has gone missing and that “she lived only in menow”, we naturally assume he means that she lives on in his memories, but this isnot the case. He goes on to explain that: “I developed in time my two-headedsystem. The front of my head was what I used with other people in the house, theback of my head was for when I was alone. My mother lived in the back of myhead.” (McGrath 1990, 98). The role of the unreliable narrator allows both Matthew and Spider to experiencehallucinations without telling us: they share their hallucinations as fact, and it isup to the reader to decipher what is real and what is not. Spider experiences an hallucination during dinner with his parents: “I cut into mypotato, and dead in the middle of the halved potato there was a dark stain. I staredat it with some unease. Then a syrupy  uid began to ooze out of the potato, thethick, slow discharge of what after a moment or two I recognised as blood.”(McGrath 1990, 117). The reader is able to establish this is an hallucination because what Spider iswitnessing doesn’t occur in real life: blood pouring from a steak would beacceptable; but not from a potato. But at no point is the hallucination con rmedbecause Spider believes what he is seeing is real. Cracks in dreams Matthew has a better comprehension of his mental health issues and is aware thathe su ers from hallucinations. He describes them as a breakdown betweendreams and reality: “It’s like we each have a wall that separates our dreams fromreality, but mine has cracks in it. The dreams can wriggle and squeeze their waythrough, until it’s hard to know the di erence.” (Filer 2013, 21). However, when this breakdown happens, Matthew is not actually aware; heknows he su ers from hallucinations but is not able to grasp when they occur.One example is when he believes he can see his deceased brother in birthday cakecandles: “Everyone broke out into a loud chorus of Happy Birthday. Simon joinedin too. He was in the  ames. Of course he was in the  ames. A nurse grabbed holdof my wrist, leading me quickly to the clinic where she held my blistering  ngersunder the cold tap.” (ibid, 276). The  rst-person narration from both Spider and Matthew allows us to see howquickly they can slip between reality and hallucination and back again withoutany forewarning; how much a part of their everyday life is a mix of reality andmental disturbance without grasping the di erence between the two. Olfactory hallucinations are rare in Schizophrenia diagnoses. Spider, who issu ering from a more severe form of the condition experiences them, butMatthew does not. Reading both novels allows the reader to bene t from beingable to experience di erent variances of the illness. Spider believes his body is emitting the smell of gas: “It was a long night. I stilldon’t know how I got through it, for it was probably the worst one yet. Despitefurther layers of brown paper taped onto my torso, despite the layers of vests andshirts and jerseys on top, the smell of gas was with me until dawn.” (McGrath1990, 154-155). Individuals who su er from such hallucinations often experience a breakdownbetween abstract and absolute. Spider’s olfactory disturbance is a representationof his inability to leave his past behind because of the murder he may or may nothave committed during a psychotic break. Sensory overload Hallucinations are one of the symptoms of Schizophrenia that can be representedin  rst-person  ction to show the reader that the narrator is not fully in touchwith reality. Descriptions of hallucinations allow the reader to witness both theirinward destruction and their outward manifestations. While the range of sensory hallucinations and how they are experienced is uniqueto each individual, even within these idiosyncratic patterns there are signi cantlinks between how symptoms are explained by actual su erers of Schizophreniaand how they are expressed in  ction. When it comes to  ction, the medical profession’s current understanding ofmental health sets the groundwork, but it is up to writers such as Filer andMcGrath to imagine how a su erer would interpret their symptoms in order to beable to tell their story.__ facebook0Twitter0reddit0Like0PoetryFictionFront And CenterColloquyInsight←  Previous Post0 CommentsArtscapeVoicesMontageBookwormVision  Masthead  Submission  Terms & Conditions  Inquiry  Media & Platforms  Publications  Newsletters  Archives  Contact Us  Privacy Statement    antonymmag.com © 2020    

All the Sights, Sounds and Smells

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All the Sights, Sounds and Smells

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