Hollywood Time-Bomb

We've reached the point and time in the semester where we are learning about character analysis.  Below I write about Marilyn Monroe.  She has a lot of character to write about, but where do you start? We know where it ends...

On the surface, Marilyn Monroe was always the picture of glamor, but whatever went on inside the famous Hollywood actress will always remain a mystery.  As a child, Marilyn grew up without a stable family.  She didn’t know who her father was.  Her mother had been committed to a mental hospital. Until she was sixteen,  Marilyn bounced from one orphanage to another.  She dreamed of being loved, but she didn’t really know what love was. Consequently, at age 16, Marilyn entered an arranged marriage with a neighbor just to be free of another orphanage and another foster family.  The falseness of this relationship may have affected her relationships with men for the rest of her life. She could never maintain a love relationship for any length of time.  As she got older, she must have become so desperate and lonely.  She wanted to be loved so badly, but she didn’t know if she could ever trust a man.  The high point of her life may have come when she transitioned from Norma Jeane to Marilyn. This came after she divorced her first husband.  She learned a path to becoming an independent woman through modeling and acting. She decided she could make her own decisions in life.  Marilyn wanted to be a star, but in a way people would regard her as a serious artist. To reach her dreams, she worked hard at every component of the job. She was willing to do whatever it took to make it happen.  As a result, Marilyn’s greatest strength may have been her willingness to sacrifice.  She left all three of her marriages because her husbands’ controlling behavior.  Along the way, she gave up security for her art.  This separated her from all the other beautiful Hollywood starlets.   Marilyn was often referred to as “The Blonde Bombshell.” This metaphor may have expressed Marilyn’s impact on her public.  However, it may have explained Marilyn’s nature.  She knew of her family’s history of mental illness.  It may have been just a matter of time before she herself would explode.

Bonnie Was a Dreamer

Bonnie Parker looks beautiful on screen when she is portrayed by Faye Dunaway in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. For me, her real beauty came in her ability to dream. She lived a life of absolute poverty during the years of the Great Depression.  When she met Clyde, she knew what she had  to do.  She had dreamt  of the opportunity to escape nearly all life.  Below is my character analysis for my Film History Research Project in English 110.



Bonnie Parker was a dreamer. Growing up in Texas – this is the early 20^th Century – she was a bright and ambitious student.  In her English classes, she showed a keen interest in poetry and literature.   She dreamt of on day becoming an actress,  but life got in the way.  She became involved with violent men.  Whatever she held dearly in her heart gradually hardened.  At age 15 she married a violent and abusive man.  His name was Roy Thorton, and he was sent to jail for armed robbery.  She never saw him again.  Although you would think she would have learned her lesson, she fell deeply in love with young Clyde Barrow.  Together they formed a gang and began a two-year long crime spree.  This was the 1930s – The Great Depression.  It was hard times.  When they met, the lived in poverty.  When they died, they had become celebrated bank robbers. As Bonnie and Clyde believed in living every moment of their lives to the fullest, it is only fitting that their deaths were truly spectacular.  After two and a half year crime spree in which the couple terrorized five states, and embarrassed, taunted, and eluded all law enforcement that pursued them, a group of Texas Rangers finally caught up with the gang hiding out in Louisiana.  An ambush was organized and carried out.  Bonnie and Clyde died in a violent onslaught of bullets.  They didn’t stand a chance.

Kyra - Her Heart is an Empty House

In our reading of The Tortilla Curtain, Kyra may not appear as often as the other main characters, but that doesn't mean she is not as important.  They have their dreams, but so does she.  

Kyra spends her days thinking about the same thing.  She has an obsession with work.  She's a perfectionist. If things don't go her way, she gets emotional. The appearance of Mexican day laborers affects the property values of the homes she sells. Suddenly things don't look ORDERLY or NEAT. Consequently, Kyra supports the closing of the Labor Exchange.  She cares more for her houses than she does for poor Mexican immigrants.

Although Kyra may not show much empathy for Mexican immigrants, she shows passion for her dogs.  When she sees a dog mistreated in a restaurant parking lot, she's ready to fight for it.  She seems to have a genuine love for children and animals.  When she sees a threat to either, she stands up for them. She is not as cold and distant as everyone thinks.

She doesn't seem effective at showing her love.  

In her efforts to be a professional success, she may have become cold and distant from her husband and child. Kyra probably finds energy and excitement from work she lacks in her home life. She uses work to cope with emotional discomfort of her marriage. Kyra may resemble the houses she sells. Visually impressive on the exterior. Cold and empty inside.

Quote Sandwich - Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

In English 009, we are developing mental illness research papers. I'm exploring consequences of anorexia in young women.  I read about the tragic death of singer Karen Carpenter. Below, I share a quote from Marya Hornbacher's memoir Wasted.  Anorexia is a dangerous condition that is not as rare as people might think. 

When Mayra was only nine years old, she became obsessed with the way she looked.  Every time she looked into the mirror, she saw someone FAT.  Soon she began starving herself to lose weight.  Anorexia took over her life at age 15.  “You never come all the way out of the mirror,” Mayra wrote in her memoir Wasted. “You stand, for the rest of your life with one foot in t his world and one in the other, where everything is UPSIDE DOWN and SAD” (285).  Here, Marya warns us that Anorexia is not just a temporary PHASE many young girls go through. It should be regarded as a DISEASE.  Sometimes a fatal one.   The obsession to lose weight can consume you.  It will dominate your thinking and reason.  When you look in the mirror, you will never be satisfied.  The only thing you think about is losing more weight. 

"Hurt" in Girl, Interrupted

After completing our reading of the memoir Girl, Interrupted, Mr. Lewenstein asked us in groups to contribute a song to a class soundtrack.  Our goal was to find a song or an artist that best represented the pain and suffering we just read about. 

The original version of the the song “Hurt” was written by Trent Reznor of The Nine-Inch Nails.  At the time he wrote the song, Trent was messed up from top to bottom.   Most of his fans must have already known he was a heroin addict, but in the dark lyrics of this song they learn of his issues with self-harm: “I hurt myself today /To see if I still feel /I focus on the pain 
/The only thing that's real..” 

In 2002 Johnny Cash covered this song  shortly before he died.  Like Trent Reznor, Johnny knew something about depression.  He was life-long drug addict.  To keep up with the rigors of his profession, he mixed amphetamine pills and alcohol.  He needed the speed to keep it going on the road.  He needed the booze to sleep.  At a certain point, the drugs were killing him.  He couldn’t even sing anymore.  What could be more depressing for a man like Cash?   

Country singer Kris Kristofferson once wrote a song about Cash with these lyrics: "He's a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction."  The song tries to explain how someone with so much going for him could throw it all away.  Kristofferson could have easily been writing about Susanna Kaysen in Girl, Interrupted.  From her writing, Susanna seems very aware of who she is, but whether she is telling the truth is anyone’s guess.  Throughout the memoir, she seems to unravel. She becomes more frightened and confused of her condition. In the chapter “Bare Bones,” she bangs her wrists and bites her hands.  She believes she’s lost her bones.   She tells everyone she has no problem, but that’s before we learn she washed down a bottle of aspirin with vodka in an effort to kill herself.

The song“Hurt” matches up well to Girl, Interrupted.  Both works speak to fear, abandonment, and self-damaging impulses.

“Hurt” by Johnny Cash	Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
I hurt myself today  To see if I still feel  I focus on the pain  The only thing that's real  The needle tears a hole The old familiar sting  Try to kill it all away  But I remember everything	I began scratching at the back of my hand. My plan was to get hold of a flap of skin and peel it away, just to have a look.  I wanted to see that my hand was a normal human hand with bones…. …I put my hand in my mouth and chomped. Success! A bubble of blood came out near my last knuckle, where my incisor had pierced the skin.                                                  ( Susanna, 102)
What have I become  My sweetest friend  Everyone I know goes away  In the end  And you could have it all  My empire of dirt  I will let you down  I will make you hurt	Lisa always knew what she needed. She’d say, “I need a vacation from this place,” and then she’s run away.  When she got back, we’d ask her how it was out there. “It’s a mean world,” she’d say.  She was usually glad enough to be back.  “There’s nobody to take care of you out there.”                                                    ( Lisa,  22)
Beneath the stains of time The feelings disappear You are someone else I am still right here	Now I would I say to myself, you are feeling alienated from people and unlike other people…. …When you look at a face, you see a blob of rubber because you are worried that your face is a blob of rubber.                                                    ( Susanna, 41)