Fiction Packet 2: 6-6-12

          For the fiction packet this week, i would like to talk about the story "Internal"  by Brian Evenson. i really like this story because there are a lot of different things to look at and a lot of different evidence to support a few different view points. The first and probably most obvious viewpoint to see in this story is a perfectly healthy intern at a psychology clinic, who, through the mind games of the doctors, gradually loses his sanity. The first doctor gives him the task of watching over his "brother" who is very mentally disturbed. Dr. Rauch sends him to a crappy apartment and orders him to take notes and psychoanalyze his brother who is in the adjacent room. through the time he is in this apartment he begins psychoanalyzing himself and eventually realizes that there is no one in the apartment, no brother. the next doctor sends him to a different apartment with holes in the walls (for observing) and tells him to watch over the person in the other room, who is in turn watching him. when he realizes that he is being watched he begins to doubt everything and is quite unhappy with the idea of being watched. he gradually loses himself in thought of being constantly watched and he tries to act how he thinks the other wants him to act, shown in the passage: "I am being observed. Make no false moves. Always gestures brimming with health" he gets violent and paranoid, yet he continues to move: "Observation must continue. close notebook, wait for the dim flicker of eye at hole again... Six drops of ink, all that remains to bring me to the cure. Forward."
          Another way to see this story, is through the eyes of a patient who is imagining all of it. some evidence for this hypothesis is the fact that everyone refers to him as "hardly the typical intern". the fact that both doctors send him to worn out apartments and all he is given to eat is corn chowder. he sits in these rooms all day thinking except when he meets and talks with a doctor. in the room with the holes in it, when he discovers someone watching him, he starts thinking about jabbing a pen through the hole into the other man's eye. he gets very paranoid and cautious when he discovers he is being watched as well as his thoughts seem to dissociate from reality. in the beginning of the story, when he talks to the doctor, he immediately assumes the doctor does not like him. also, when looked at from a far, the story is about authority figures giving him strange and pointless tasks that are designed to break him down. over all that sounds like the delusion of a mad man. 
          A third and final way i have found to look at this story is a way to make fun of psychology. the first doctor he goes to feels the need to analyze everything into types: "the nervous type, the squeamish type, the distracted type, the codswallop type, the broken-nosed type, the gangrenous type, the rubbed-purr type, the resurrective type, Eater of chowder type, gill net type, ect." some of these terms are ridiculous and don't make any sense, just like it doesn't make any sense to try and generalize the inner workings of a mind that varies greatly from person to person. the second doctor thinks that "gestures are the most accurate definition of mental heath" which is again, ridiculous. no person stands with a perfectly straight spine, not one has the perfect posture and everyone has different mannerisms that shape how the walk and talk and gesture. and finally how through trying to conform to these "standards" of mental health, our intern drives himself insane. i picture him at the end of the story, curled into the corner of the room, perfect posture, clutching his notebook and murmuring to himself: must keep observing, must move forward...