Week 6: Analyzing Memoirs

 Growing up in Therapy

    In Lena Dunham's memoir, Growing up in Therapy, she paints a very thorough and detailed picture from the start. Her description of herself as a little girl dealing with so much fear and anxiety really struck home and drew me in. I can very easily see myself within Dunham in this piece. I am an extremely anxious person and I've been called a hypochondriac by many people over the years. I understand her fears, that feeling of dread that some illness or germ is sneaking up on you at all times. To this day I still assume the worst when I have what seems like an ordinary symptom to anyone else last more than a day or so. For example, if I have a headache for a few days, I will quickly feel the urge to google symptoms of brain cancer or meningitis or whatever worse case scenario that could explain away something as simple as a few headaches. I understand that never-ending fear of the world around you. This allowed me to better understand that I am not the only with these issues, but also to realize how 'crazy' or irrational it can sound to outsiders when I, and Dunham, react the way we do to these minor issues.

    However, I do feel that Dunham does over tell her story. The main idea of the memoir, her mental struggles and her resulting therapy, is captured within early on and yet the writer continued to discuss similar events repeatedly. At some point, I found myself beginning to skim the piece rather than read it because it felt predictable; We'd already heard her discuss other therapy sessions, so why bother to read another one without any substantial difference? This is not to say that the memoir wasn't entertaining or interesting. I still greatly enjoyed the piece and the level of detail, I just felt that the story tried to take on too many details and memories for that length of memoir; We've been told to stick to one memory for a short memoir, but hers encompassed so many that it was hard to keep track of each one. Her level of detail in this memoir definitely demonstrates how her story was shown to the readers rather than simply told. I could easily picture the scenes and the people she wrote about, such as her therapist Margaret, "she looks just as I left her: wavy red bob, creatively draped black dress, and witch boots." It was easy to picture Margaret from this description and while it wasn't necessarily needed for the memoir itself, it did allow me to immerse myself within the story to a greater degree.  

    I do feel that Dunham is mostly telling the truth within her memoir. Her feelings and fears seem very genuine, they were too detailed to feel fabricated. However, some of the things she described in her piece seem quite far-fetched. The one thing that stood out the most to me as being potentially exaggerated was her maturity and understanding at such a young age. The moment she meets with the first doctor particularly seemed implausible. Her choosing to play with certain toys in specific manners in order to demonstrate her "loneliness and introspection" and her poetic answers do not fit with the mind of a child. I do not find this scene plausible in the slightest. I do think it is possible that a version of this memory really did occur, but that her adult mind added more logic and reasoning behind her choices than what truly existed in the moment. 

Cousins

    I see myself less in this piece than I did in the other, but I could still relate to the emotion behind it. The situation of someone leaving in an emotional state and losing communication with them for so long, I felt that. I have lived that experience, in a less serious manner but with the same emotions. I had lost touch with a very close relative for over six months over some very heated and uncalled for words. This can be very devastating but also very awkward upon reunion, just as the author described. When you lose touch with someone you were very close to, no matter the reason, it is always sad and uncomfortable when you realize you no longer know them as well as you used to, that life has moved on. I discovered through this that something as petty as a fight should not be allowed to keep people separated for so long, that things need to be resolved no matter how its done. 

    I don't believe the author over tells the story. The story sticks to its main points- the fight and the reunion; anything beyond that would be unnecessary and distracting. There's enough detail given in the important moments to understand the meaning and the emotion behind the memories, but not too much to overwhelm the reader. In this way, the author tells the story more than he/she shows it. The memoir gives just enough description in the scenes to feel connected to them but not enough to picture them in full detail. The emotional descriptions can be seen most clearly in the first paragraph during the fight, as she "drove off in the middle of the night, out into a massive rain storm nonetheless, without even saying goodbye. It was like watching someone take off on a sail boat going out into the Atlantic, not knowing if you would ever see them again." The pain, longing, and confusion are very obvious through the comparison of her leaving into the night with the sailing ship, while the description of the massive rain storm gives the reader enough information to picture themselves watching this fight happen in real time. More details of the scene may have been nice and may have allowed me to feel more connected to the story. I wish we were told what the fight was about and how it began, but the author's choice to focus on the cousin leaving and their subsequent reunion makes these details unneeded, but I would have appreciated them nonetheless.

    I don't feel as if this story is false, but there isn't a lot that could be false about it. There's very little information given throughout the memoir other than the author's emotions and perspective on the event, so there's not much that could be definitively untrue. The only factual information given throughout the piece was that there was a fight in which the cousin, who'd been living with them, left and that they met again years later for dinner. The rest of the story relies solely on the author's opinion and emotion. However, I do feel that the author seems to be telling the truth about those emotions. She seems to genuinely regret their fight and feel uncomfortable with how they'd ended things, and then relieved at their reconciliation at the ending. This story seems plausible and believe.