46 Michael Scheeres – Mental Illness Challenges in Young Adults Portrayed by Jenniver Niven vs. E. Lockhart
Michael Scheeres (He/him) is a Junior from Grand Rapids, MI. Michael is passionate about writing, and the topic of mental illness is near and dear to his heart! This work was prepared for Alisa Clapp-Itnyre’s English L391, who states, “Michael wrote an excellent paper on mental illness in 2 YA novels, E. Lockharts’ We Were Liars and Jennifer Niven’s All the Bright Places. I am very impressed with the professionalism of this paper, and the work in revising an already strong paper.”
Mental Illness Challenges in Young Adults Portrayed by Jenniver Niven vs. E. Lockhart
As the times progress, people are becoming increasingly aware of mental health challenges in the world, even in themselves. Young adults need to be exposed to literature that takes on such themes. E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars and Jennifer Niven’s All the Bright Places are two examples that tackle these themes. Kirkus gives praise to We Were Liars for its themes of aristocracy and the consequences of such (Reviewer, “We Were Liars”) and offers praise to All the Bright Places for tackling dark topics of mental illness and suicide contained within (Reviewer, “All the Bright Places”). Both stories involve mental illness themes, which involve tragic circumstances. In We Were Liars, the reader joins the story on the 17th summer, a couple of years after the narrator, Cady, experienced the traumatic fire she helped set. Cady is the unreliable first-person narrator of this novel. As Dr. Clapp-Itnyre notes in her video, in All the Bright Places, Finch and Violet are dual first-person narrators in Niven’s story, which is becoming an increasingly popular style in young adult literature (Clapp-Itnyre, video on All the Bright Places, Spring 2024). Cady is a victim of possible traumatic brain injury (Lockhart 34) and PTSD in response to the traumatic events of the fire, while Finch has a case of bipolar and Violet experienced grief and trauma with the death of her close older sister, Eleanor. Overall, the mental health challenges presented by Niven are more relevant to most young adults compared to those presented by Lockhart, due to the types of illness and trauma involved in their stories. Support coming from adults in both novels is not very substantial. Regarding peer support, Cady is alone with her memories of the other three Liars (Johnny, Mirren, and Gat), while Finch/Violet mostly have each other.
In Lockhart’s story, the narrator, Cady, experiences an unusual degree of trauma (including a brain injury). In contrast, in Niven’s story, the narrating characters, Finch and Violet, do not have these factors involved in their mental illness challenges. In We Were Liars, Cady tells the story of burning down the family home on Beechwood Island later in the book, which involved Johnny, Mirren, and Gat dying in the fire (Lockhart 204). Early in We Were Liars, Cady briefly recalls lying on the beach during her initial telling of her recollection of summer fifteen in the story (Lockhart 31). She remembered plunging into the ocean and hitting her head on a rock. Details surrounding this memory are accurate, down to her numb arms and legs due to the burns she sustained in the fire (Lockhart 32, 205). However, the book does not spell out clearly whether Cady experienced a physical traumatic brain injury. Doctors give the impression that a physical brain injury is not confirmed (Lockhart 49) since the brain scans revealed no findings (Lockhart 32). It is ambiguous as to whether there is a brain injury involved. Still, her memories and her official diagnosis could suggest it is likely: “post-traumatic headaches, also known as PTHA. Migraine headaches caused by traumatic brain injury” (Lockhart 34). One clear result of the incident is a striking amount of memory repression in Cady. There are significant gaps in the story as Cady attempts to tell it. Throughout most of the book, Cady does not realize she is the only one out of the Liars who has not passed away, until she states it directly in the beginning of part five (Lockhart 201). After the incident, Penny attempts to remind her daughter Cady of what happened. However, in her state, Cady cannot acknowledge the events (Lockhart 202). There is an unusually intense distorted perception of time and reality.
In contrast to Cady, Finch exhibits classic, more straightforward symptoms of bipolar including mood swing cycles throughout the story (Niven 278). Reader Kara Lydy notes that Finch speaks “candidly” about being “awake” and “asleep” throughout the book, giving the reader a good idea of what it is like to experience bipolar symptoms (Lydy, discussion for English L391, Spring 2024). “Asleep” periods are associated with symptoms of depression, and “awake” periods are associated with symptoms of mania. Finch has a fragmented family involving divorce (Niven 238), and he does not appear to have a particularly wealthy background, but his family can make ends meet. He does exhibit suicidal ideation, including periodic quotes and thoughts involving death in the story (Niven 75, 195, 388). Violet is a victim of the traumatic loss of her sister, Eleanor, in a car accident (Niven 19). She has a stable family, with a socioeconomic status indicating they appear well off. The story begins with Violet decompensating towards suicidal ideation, as seen in the bell tower incident (Niven 5). Reader Emily Marks also notes that Violet was heavily involved with discovering Finch and his grief in the story, and this can connect to readers who are the loved ones of those suffering from severe mental illness (Marks, discussion for English L391, Spring 2024). Overall, the illustrations of mental health struggles are closer to home in Niven’s story. The struggles involve abusive or indifferent family backgrounds and loss. All the Bright Places involves more common diagnoses, such as bipolar, depression, and anxiety, which are mental illness themes applicable to more young adults in Niven’s story compared to Lockhart’s scenarios of Cady’s post-traumatic brain injury and rather extreme case of PTSD.
In both stories, the adults are woefully incompetent in helping the young adult narrators deal with their mental illness struggles, despite having opportunities to provide significant support. Cady’s grandparents Harris and Tinny, aunts Carrie and Bess, and her Mom Penny share her grandfather’s passion for keeping up the tradition of good familial appearances without delinquency (Lockhart 3). The Sinclair family donned the term “Liars” to four close young adults in the book: Cady, Johnny, Mirren, and Gat (Lockhart 7). They suffer throughout the story as told by Cady because of such generational emotional incompetency and selfish obsessions. Harris Sinclair notes to Cady that the passing away of Grandma Tipper marked the loss of the best part of him, according to him (Lockhart 113). As reader Emma Bowerstock notes, much of the negative qualities of Cady’s aunts stem from Grandpa Harris’s classist behavior that he imposes on them (Bowerstock, discussion for English L391, Spring 2024). Harris also had mottos associated with the need to keep up appearances. Two examples include “don’t take no for an answer,” such as it can relate to the fine ivory pieces of art in his house (Lockhart 111) and, “never complain, never explain”, which is the attitude Harris imposes on the younger generations (Lockhart 99). As reader Alexis Carter notes, Gat is of lower socioeconomic status compared to the Sinclairs, which contributes to Harris’s racist and poor treatment of Gat and his family (Carter, discussion for English L391, Spring 2024). Cady’s mom (Penny) displays her need to keep up appearances as seen by her expensive items in the house and the BMW in the driveway, all to maintain the image of being a Sinclair (Lockhart 46). After Cady’s accident, Penny repeatedly brought up the traumatic event even though Cady was unable to acknowledge it, let alone process it (Lockhart 202). Cady does not have much fatherly presence (“Mr. Eastman”) other than the forgotten year-long trip to Europe funded by Grandpa Harris (Lockhart 128). To give Penny credit, she did not have a network of support for herself after the fire. Also, with Cady’s illness, Penny was forced to carve her own path to give Cady support, and she did her best to do so, following the doctors’ advice (Lockhart 202).
In Niven’s story, the key support adults in the narrators’ lives include their school counselors and families. However, like the adults in Lockhart’s story, the adults do not provide good direction or support for Finch and Violet, who are suffering from mental illness. Finch’s school counselor, Mr. Embry (Finch nicknamed him “Embryo”) reacts to Finch’s story about the close call on the bell tower by exhibiting fear of being sued after the bell tower incident (Niven 14). Also, Embryo does not respond appropriately to red flags, such as Finch’s jokes about not committing suicide on pizza day (Niven 13). Violet’s counselor, Mrs. Kresney, chooses not to investigate the bell tower incident with Violet (Niven 18). In addition, Mrs. Kresney allows Violet’s mom to breach their confidence fully. Everything Violet reports to her mom inevitably gets reported back to Mrs. Kresney. As a result, Violet stops confiding in both adults (Niven 19). Finch has a rough life at home. His father was abusive – at one point, he put Finch and his mom in the hospital for injuries (Niven 160). Finch’s mom works two jobs and drinks at home (Niven 71), and is not involved with parenting Finch (Niven 38). Finch’s older sister Kate does not pass on the concerning voicemails to Finch’s mom, and Finch deletes them as he encounters them (Niven 140, 277). Finch’s mom and sisters choose to ignore unusual behavior on Finch’s part, including the period before he takes his own life (Niven 316). Violet’s home life is not as tricky as Finch’s, but it is still unhelpful. Violet’s mom makes her best attempts to connect with her daughter despite her persistent, troubled state of mind, but Violet tends to push her away quietly with vague, untruthful responses (Niven 50). While she had good intentions of sharing information with Mrs. Kresney, it backfired because Violet stopped feeling comfortable sharing with both after she realized there was a close line of communication between the two (Niven 45). In both Lockhart’s and Niven’s stories, the adults had opportunities to reach out and provide resources to their suffering children and failed to do so. Unfortunately, it can be accurate to portray adults this way. However, it should be noted that the impressionable young adult reader should be cautioned about generalizing these portrayals across all adults in their life.
In All the Bright Places, Finch and Violet have each other as their primary empathetic support, as well as a few peers they can contact for some support. For Finch, this includes Charlie Donahue (Niven 10), and for Violet, this includes Amanda Monk (Niven 45). Finch and Violet do not have many other outlets for support in the story. Niven is more popularly relatable since most mental illness results from factors outside of traumatic brain injury or extreme trauma (NIH), such as that experienced by Cady in Lockhart’s story. Circumstances surrounding Cady regarding peer support provide a unique example of mental illness in young adults. Finch’s and Violet’s resources for peer support align better with typical examples of mental illness in young adults. However, a close friendship like this cannot produce healing alone, as evidenced by Finch’s suicide and Violet being devastated about this in the end (Niven 335, 339).
In We Were Liars, Cady does not have direct support from her peers because they are memories of people who died in the fire earlier, whereas Finch and Violet have each other for support throughout the story. Cady’s primary peer support group (the Liars) is dead from the story’s start: Johnny, Mirren, and Gat (Lockhart 201). Cady is interacting with her memories of Mirren and Johnny and perceives them as alive. She is hurt by them not reaching out or answering their e-mails (Lockhart 82, 125). Cady also has full-on conversations with Gat in her story (Lockhart 192). When reading the novel, these memories are like ghosts, because Cady still has conversations with them, but they are not living. Like dreams, Cady’s mind is processing the incident through talking with the memories of her closest peers, to bring out the truths that Cady needs to hear as she is ready for them (Lockhart 82, 125, 192). As far as adult peer support is concerned, Cady does not receive substantial support from Penny or other adults in the story, including Harris, Aunt Carrie, or Aunt Bess. Her mom and her sisters cope by drinking large amounts of alcohol (Lockhart 153).
Overall, young adults dealing with mental illness can empathize with Niven’s story more so than Lockhart’s because most mental illnesses do not stem from extreme traumatic events or traumatic brain injury (NIH). Also, Niven tells her story in the context of the main characters being in school with a larger community around them, which is more relatable. The community in Lockhart’s story is complicated, including “ghosts” that Cady interacts with for friends and a genuinely devastated, isolated set of adults in her life. Both books lead to grim outcomes and have their place in young adult literature as a warning of the harsh realities when facing these challenges. However, the young adult audience also needs exposure to stories about mental illness challenges that lead to bright outcomes. Hope is a powerful medicine for young adults dealing with mental illness, particularly hope that, with hard work, time, and proper resources, they can overcome these challenges and things can get easier. Neither book suggests this is the case, and there is a call to action for more books with such themes to produce hope instead of despair in young adult readers. After all, mental illness is one final frontier mankind must master to break the generational cycles we all inherit.
Works Cited
Bowerstock, Emma, Discussion on We Were Liars. For English L391, Indiana University East, Spring 2024. Carter, Alexis, Discussion on We Were Liars. For English L391, Indiana University East, Spring 2024. Clapp-Itnyre, Video on All the Bright Places. For English L391, Indiana University East, Spring 2024.
Clapp-Itnyre, Videos on We Were Liars. For English L391, Indiana University East, Spring 2024.
Lockhart, E. We Were Liars. Kindle ed., Delacorte Press, 2014.
Lydy, Kara, Discussion on All the Bright Places. For English L391, Indiana University East, Spring 2024. Marks, Emily, Discussion on All the Bright Places. For English L391, Indiana University East, Spring 2024. National Institutes of Health (NIH) (US). “Information about Mental Illness and the Brain.” Biological
Sciences Curriculum Study, NIH Curriculum Supplement Series [Internet], 2007, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK20369/ .
Niven, Jennifer. All the Bright Places. Kindle ed., Ember, 2015.
Reviewer. “All the Bright Places.” Kirkus Reviews, 6 January 2015, www.kirkusreviews.com/book reviews/jennifer-niven/all-the-bright-places/ .
Reviewer. “We Were Liars.” Kirkus Reviews, 13 May 2014, www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/e lockhart/we-were-liars/ .
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