Dancing in the Dark

Clem Martin’s, Bitter Medicine is structured in such a way that it leaves you in the dark and information is filtered as you read. Much like Clem who “knew little about schizophrenia” (Clem 33), we as the reader are assumed not to know much about it as well. The way Clem feeds us information is by telling us what the doctors have told him at that very moment. “A disorder of the brain, they told us. It could generate hallucinations, both visual and aural, paranoid behavior, passivity, and confusion.” (Clem 33). Clem references the doctors, psychiatrists or nurses when it comes to dealing with the facts of Liv’s mental condition. He does this because he is in the dark as much as we as the readers are. This adds believability to the memoir in a way because we are hearing it from the right people. “His community nurse and psychiatrist met, informed him that the security work was contributing to his illness, and urged him to quit.” (Clem 115). It is as if Clem is including the readers in that hospital room where they are getting the news revealed to them.

There is this notion of being left in the dark, and not knowing all of the facts that parallels the statement Clem is making on mental illness. The people who are afflicted with a mental condition are in the dark as much as their families who are hearing the facts from their doctors. The mental patient and their family walk hand in hand in the dark.