True Meaning of the Voice

            The thought of an individual being mad doesn’t seem too outlandish to many these days.  It almost seems as if people are deemed insane if something goes wrong; if they make a mistake, it’s because they’re crazy.  Ted Bundy, for example, brutally raped and murdered hundreds of women, escaped from prison several times, and was finally put to rest through the death penalty in the electric chair.  His lack of empathy, and sympathy, were supposedly his contributing to factors to being a sadistic serial killer.  It almost seems like this is society’s way of justifying unjust acts; claiming mental illness on the individual.  Not in the sense that we say it is okay for the person to act this way, but by creating reason for the purpose behind the act.  A question can then be aroused; what causes insanity?  The millions of other individuals living in this world that are considered insane typically go to insane asylums where they, in turn, ‘confess’ their problems to various doctors (psychiatrists, psychologists, and other various physicians if needed).  After hours of needed therapy, the doctors pick through statements made by the patient, and attempt to decipher the root of their insanity. 

            In the novel East, West by Salman Rushdie there is a short story entitled The Harmony of the Spheres.  The focus of the narrative was on Eliot Crane, an insane author who commits suicide.  It seems as though Rushdie is the narrator of the story, and he attempts to convey the purpose behind Crane’s suicide.  Crane, being an author, was in the process of writing some work concerning this very issue, and claims that insanity is a mere chemical imbalance.  However, the author seems to tell us differently.  Crane had demons, who were actually his friends, but he would nudge them away at certain times when he was afraid.  It was the idea that he only had this insane thoughts and feelings when he was writing, but became depressed when he wasn’t writing.  It almost seems as though everyone in the novel was looking at Crane like an insane person, rather than any other person.  They all sat back and talked about how crazy he was, and how fanatical his thoughts were, but they never actually listened.  It brings me back to the idea of the physicians dealing with patients in the insane asylums.  They’re hearing what the individual is saying, but because they’re so stuck on the idea that the person is crazy, they don’t actually listen to what they have to say.

            Perhaps this makes everyone but these people crazy.  Maybe we’re all stuck in a little bubble, hoping to find peace and harmony in the world, and these ‘crazy’ people are the only one’s able to see the reality of it.  No one really knows what’s right and what’s wrong in this world; what’s reality and what’s not.  Who’s to judge the people that think against the majority?  Writing is what was said to cause Crane’s insanity.  It seems like maybe he was just frustrated that no one was able to understand what exactly he was saying.  Have you ever been in an argument with someone with an incredibly thick skull, and get so frustrated by the end of the argument because everything you said went into one ear and out the other?  It’s almost like that.  Crane could’ve have just gotten so frustrated with people that writing was his only outlet, and actually seeing all of the nonsense in black and white caused him more grief than necessary.

            We see by the end of the story that the work written by Crane was truth.  After Crane took his life, his wife had Rushdie look through his chest of old writings.  There he found a plethora of off-the-wall stories concerning him, his wife, their friends, Crane’s wife, etc.  When Rushdie explained the letters to his wife, the story ends with a quote from her:  “Those weren’t fantasies” (p. 146).  Perhaps Rushdie was the one who should’ve been stigmatized with the insane characteristic and not Crane.  The sense of oblivion in Crane’s realistic writings could have caused Rushdie to have a mental break down.  Again we go back to this notion of seeing things in black and white.  It is easier for people to erase images and memories from our minds, but to actually have them printed on paper for us to go over again and again for the rest of our lives can be intense.  I don’t think anyone can really say what causes us to lose our sense of balance; a straight definition for why people are crazy. 

            I’m going to head back in the direction of those individuals just not being able to handle the dense knowledge of others.  I’m not saying that insane people should rule the world, and that we all have demons that are from different planets, but I am saying maybe we should take a listen to what they’re saying.  We hear one crazy thing come out of a person’s mouth and we call them mad, but do we actually think about the true meaning of the voice.  There are plenty of mental illnesses that are caused by various physical and genetic problems, so maybe the ‘crazies’ we’re hearing are just unable to voice their opinions in an ‘intellectual’ form.  Think of a third-grader talking about fictional seasonal characters, or the monster hiding in their closet.  No one thinks the children are mad, so why stigmatize the adults?  There is no one way of defining how individuals lose their sense of balance; it has to be on individual terms.  Again and again we must examine the true meaning of the voice.