“With Shuddering Fall” by Joyce Carol Oates: In author’s first novel, 17-year-old protagonist struggles with the question of whether she is crazy

“People thought she was queer in the head. True. Perhaps true…Tears streamed over her cheeks…She did not even know what she was crying about” (1, pp. 52-53). “She could not even understand her emotions, or understand if they were truly hers” (1, p. 189). In multiple personality, the personality who is “out” may experience, and be puzzled by, the emotions of another personality who is behind the scenes.

“…Karen felt that, deep inside, secretly inside her, she was able to think clearly and sanely” (1, p. 69). The personality who is “out” is aware of another personality behind the scenes who is high-functioning.

“Her mind went blank…and she lost her sense of time. She could not have said how long it was since she had left her home…Time had proceeded with gaps she did not try to understand” (1, pp. 82-83). Memory gaps are a cardinal symptom of multiple personality, because some personalities have no memory for the period of time that another personality was “out” and in control. Search “memory gaps,” a major recurring issue.

“Your very being is a puzzle to me, a most delightful puzzle,” another character says to Karen (1, p. 124). People with multiple personality have puzzling inconsistency (due to unrecognized influences from, and switching among, alternate personalities). But, unlike people with psychosis, people with multiple personality may be quite engaging.

“Karen could not hold together the snatches of herself that were revealed to her. She was incomplete, not quite human, a mockery of a person” (1, p. 190). Yes, in multiple personality, any one personality is incomplete. It is all of the person’s personalities, taken as a whole, that compose the complete person.

Karen is psychiatrically hospitalized near the end of the novel, but the psychiatrist, about to send her home, is impressed with the basic soundness of her mind. “So very few people we send out of here—rarely anyone like you, self-cured” (1, p. 307).

At the end, back in her home town and living with her family, Karen states the main theme of Joyce Carol Oates’ first novel: “They know something is wrong with me, that my mind is wrong, put together wrong. Am I to blame for that? Can I help my mind? It is insane to look for meaning in life, and it is insane not to; what am I to do?” (1, p. 329). Keep writing.

1. Joyce Carol Oates. “With Shuddering Fall.” New York, Ecco HarperCollins, 1964, 2018.