In Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, Susannah Cahalan struggles to piece together the events of her month of madness during which twenty-four years of normalcy Susannah are suddenly lost. in a few weeks. As her consciousness and her physical body are no longer compatible, she is no longer capable of understanding what she is doing, and therefore no longer what she is becoming. With virtually no memory of her actions, Cahalan is fragmented and she uses Brain on Fire to pioneer her journey in hopes of redefining her identity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay Due to the lack of control Susannah has over her actions, Susannah uses words such as monster and stranger to describe the part of her that she and her family must confront repeatedly. For example, when she rereads old Susannah's diary entries "urgently [attempting] to communicate a deep, dark part of herself" (60), she describes it as incomprehensible even though she wrote herself. This part of Susannah is completely alien and dysfunctional. Her boyfriend, Stephen, stays by her side and Susannah describes him as Stephen "loving her enough" (58) to look beyond the ailing Susannah and see the old Susannah in her. By simply saying this, she is implying how her illness created this negative exterior that blocked the "real" Susannah from everyone, hence a distinct categorization. Although Susannah's emotional and physical well-being relies on the support of her family, it begins to take its toll on her when it begins to seem like "radiation pity" from them. So not only does Susannah have to rely on them for almost everything, but she also has to be able to feel their support. This dependent, crazy and unpredictable side of Susannah is what causes her to characterize herself as a monster. As Susannah's state of being rapidly deteriorates, she relies on family, friends, and outside sources to help her piece together the mystery of the "new Susannah." ". Early on, Stephen witnesses one of Cahalan's seizures. Although she describes the scene vividly, Susannah did not recover the memory of this crisis, saying that she instead relied on Stephen's memories(41). This event marked a turning point in Susannah's life, where she would look back on it and only remember a significant disconnect. Later, for Susannah's birthday, her cousin Hannah gives her a gift that she struggles to unwrap. She says that her "physical slowness and awkward speech reminded Hannah of a Parkinson's disease patient" (104). In fact, when the gifts turn out to reflect books she has read before, Susannah says she has never read them. This observation of Hannah and her mother is an outside source that clearly shows how forgetful Susannah was during her illness, which is also demonstrated by the fact that she does not remember the entire event after her illness. When her friends visit her in the hospital and try to find out what's going on, she once again says, "I… don't remember" (111). This repeated forgetting depicts a struggle between the old Susannah and the new Susannah to do normal, everyday things, such as having a casual conversation with friends she has had for years. During her crazy month, there are always people around her who wonder “do you think she will always be the same” (111). As she digs deeper into the mystery of her illness, Susannah not only disconnects from her former self, but loses it completely as madness takes over.the top. Her illness has caused her behavior to deviate from what she considers to be the social norm, opening the door to a multitude of binary constructs. At first, when Susannah tries to find a reason why she is the way she is, she ends up going back and forth with her mother and Allen because of multiple illogical reasons she comes up with (56). This is a sign to Susannah after her recovery, as well as to her mother and Allen, of how rational Susannah was replaced by an erratic Susannah during her illness. Although Susannah has so far maintained a professional and normal lifestyle, she quickly becomes impulsive and delusional. This is reflected when she attempts to jump out of the car shortly after hallucinating (61). Susannah also has a significant speech impediment, one that she, as a professional journalist, never resolved before her illness. She says that "I had been a professional conversationalist, normally the sort of person who could chat to a brick wall" (109). However, during her illness, Susannah says people can barely understand what she says half the time. It is a sign of the emergence of a new self and perhaps also of the loss of one's old identity. In one of the EEG videos, Susannah is seen turning on the television and talking to him, then panicking when the nurses turn off the television (87). Since at this point no one has yet identified Susannah's illness, these delusions not only impact Susannah, but also the doctors who try to help her. They associate terms like “schizoaffective disorder” and “psychosis” with Susannah, which only confuses her further. This confusion can be seen when doctors continue to associate terms with its symptoms but are unable to identify a specific cause with their MRI scans. and CT scans (114). In fact, at one point a nurse tells him that she has seen Susannah's situation before and that it is all in her head because of stress from Susannah's job (64). Susannah takes this literally and ends up thinking that it was all a trap and that the nurse was a hired actor. As a result, this deflates Susannah's motivation to find answers, which widens the hole in her identity that she strives to fill. Even though Susannah's deviation becomes apparent to her at some point, she still struggles to adapt and conform to it. appropriately. However, many of his reactions were greatly influenced by his illness. For example, this is evident when Dr. Najjar redirected Susannah for a brain biopsy. Susannah reacted with childlike enthusiasm that quickly turned to fear and distress (137). Furthermore, Susannah's new self is so deviated from her old self that even she barely recognizes herself. When Susannah describes watching videotapes of herself again, she says she "could never have imagined [herself] capable of such madness and misery" (175). Susannah's identity is also shaped and influenced in many ways by the relationship with her family. , boyfriend and friends. Throughout her memoir, Susannah often reveals how the support of these people contributed to her path to recovery. When Susannah's former self emerges amidst the abnormality and madness, it is clear that this has excited the characters around her because it represents progress. This can be seen when Susannah and her boyfriend Stephen start singing the chorus of a song they both like together towards the end of the book (171) and Stephen reacts with astonishment. Susannah's relationship with her father is also very important. At the beginning of the memoir, his father is very.