Close Reading: "No One Brings Dinner When You Daughter Is An Addict"

     Larry M. Lake, a writing professor at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., submitted a heart-felt commentary to Slate.com about the stigma of mental disorders. Lake contrasts the support his family received from their neighbors when his wife, Mary-Beth, was going through chemo therapy with the time his  daughter, Maggie, was checked into a psychiatric hospital. As a pleading father for a societal change and as a writer, Lake uses imagery, language, and syntax to prove that dealing with mental illness affects families the same as any sickness.
     The author makes sure the reader understands the magnitude of support his family received during his wife's battle with breast cancer by vividly describing the dishes they were given. For months, neighbors brought them "chicken breasts encrusted in parmesan, covered safely in tin-foil;pots of soup with hearty bread;bubbling pans of lasagna and macaroni and cheese,...and warm pies overflowing with syrups of cherries or apples." The author is flooding the reader with images of warm, well-prepared dishes that prove the family's neighbors were genuinely showing concern for them. A few paragraphs later, the author is describing Maggie while working in the garden at her drugs and alcohol addiction treatment center. In the garden, Maggie "arranged rocks around an angel statue "and planted flowers. The author wants to capture the essence of rebirth and freshness when he describes his daughter, a struggling addict, "carrying buckets of water to nurture impatiens, petunia, delphinium, and geranium." The euphoria of this scene would be lost if the author simply said, "she watered flowers in the garden." With the additional details, the reader imagines a heavenly place where Maggie is planting seeds and growing internally. Another example of the author using powerful imagery to convey Maggie's journey to recovery was the description of the chaos that ensued her horrific car crash. He says, "the accident site was a garish roadside attraction of backboards" with "IV tubes", "strobing lights", "the deep thumping of helicopter blades", and Maggie's front tooth "lay[ing] in a puddle of blood on the ground." Here the author is attending to the reader's senses to illustrate the shift in environment/setting. By the author paying attention to imagery, the reader attributes warm and loving images to the family's experience with Mary-Beth's breast cancer. In contrast, empty refrigerators, bruises, and  gritty images are associated with Maggie's story to convey the different treatment the family received from their peers.
      Language is used creatively by Lake and is often used to make powerful comparisons that stick in the reader's mind. For example, after Maggie survives the violent car crash, Lake describes her lying in a hospital bed  with a "swollen mass of stitches" and dried blood still "caked in her ears." The author compares Mary-Beth trying to clean up the blood "with a licked paper towel, as if she were gently wiping Maggie's face of grape jelly smudges or white donut powder just after Sunday school." This simile does more than describe Mary Beth's actions, but hints to her desperation to help her daughter like she used to back when times were much simpler. The effect of this simile plucks at the reader's emotions and allows them to see deeper into this family's suffering. Another example of the author using language effectively was when he retells the day he returned Maggie back to the addiction center after the crash. He said Maggie was "a heroine in a wheelchair among heroin addicts and alcoholics." Although the author never states that Maggie used heroin, it is implied through the details of her "drug abuse" and "arrest for drug possession". By placing "heroine" and "heroin" together, the author is using the connotation of heroine to describe Maggie. Though the words sound the same, the reader is made to understand the difference. Maggie is a heroine and has transcended her heroin dependency.
     Throughout Lake's essay, syntax is regularly used as a tool to create drama.The first line opens "When my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, we ate well." The reader soon discovers this is the author's way of explaining the great support his neighbors showed by giving them delicious meals. Then, Lake introduces Maggie's story.To remind the reader of the lack of support his family received, after he would explain a painful moment in Maggie's illness, we would follow it with a short sentence like "No warm casseroles." This pattern is seen in the rest of the essay to show the continued lack of support the neighbors showed during this difficult time. The brevity of these sentences stand out from the longer, more descriptive lines that surround it. This grabs the reader's attention and ensures they take the correct message away; mental disorder equals no food which means, no support. Of course, the author is not saying that giving food is the only way someone can sincerely show their concern for others. However, by saying "No scalloped potatoes in tinfoil pans," the author is pointing out how Mary Beth's  cancer seems to resonate differently among people from Maggie's bipolar disorder. In this case, it was represented through their sympathy dishes. 


THE ARTICLE:http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2013/11/families_dealing_with_mental_illness_need_support_too.html