A Portrayal of Insanity

She wanted him to tell the truth. The truth was undeniable. He wasn’t real. Why did he tell her already? She already knows what he wants to tell her. He doesn’t understand the point of the conversation. The view was beautiful. The truth would be too brutal for her. She walks away from him. He walks up to her to tell her what she wants to know. She walks to him to tell him that she really doesn’t care. This had happened before in the past, when they had fought before. John never went for walks unless Tom went along. Tom liked to run until his legs burned. She still wants to know the truth…

The previous paragraph is disorienting. Even though I wrote it, when I read it I am not sure what exactly is going on. It feels like there are two ideas intermingled. There is also no clear message. If I was the reader I would be confused and more than a little miffed.

 As I read Bessie Head’s book, A Question of Power, I felt the same way. The book is written to convey the horror of madness. It is a semi-autobiographical, fictional account of a person dealing with a mental illness. Elizabeth is the main character who experiences “spirits” who live and interact with her. These spirit characters are intangible. However, they become real based on Elizabeth’s belief in their reality.

Bessie Head writes her book in a chaotic manner. From the reader’s perspective the first thirty four pages of the book are difficult to understand. It’s as if someone is trying to piece together a puzzle. The book starts off talking about a male character, “It seemed almost incidental that he was African.”(11) However, she doesn’t reveal his identity until the second paragraph. His name is Sello and it later turns out he is a figment of the main character’s imagination. It seems as if Bessie Head is trying to instill uncertainty from the beginning. Next she shifts from the male character to a female character, “The women had first possessed the arrogance of innocence…” (12) The female character turns out to be the main character of the book, Elizabeth. Head shifts between the two characters without reason or clarification.

The book proceeds to discuss the two spirits in Elizabeth’s mind, Sello and Dan. These two characters are God like in Elizabeth’s mind. Her discovery of their being and her interactions with them are spread throughout the text. She believes Dan is evil and Sello is a good spirit. At first Elizabeth is described as having a close relationship with Dan, but once learning of his true character, “she spent hours and hours undoing the links which bound her to Dan…”(12) Later on she says that Sello saved her from her relationship with Dan, “‘Thank you! Oh God, thank you for the lever out of hell!’”(12) So we not only are thrown off by Head’s writing we are faced with Elizabeth being crazy herself. As readers we are thrown into a whirlwind of madness.

Bessie Head uses Dan and Sello as tools to further confuse the reader; one is not sure if these characters are real or fake. Sello is introduced at the beginning of the book, and then later Elizabeth’s discovery of his existence is depicted. She sees him in her mind, “The form of a man totally filled the large horizon in the front of her.” (22) Sello seems to be a figment of her imagination until another real character in the book experiences his presence, “Tom started and looked about the room with wide, alert eyes…” (24) Tom is another character in the book that seems to become aware of Sello’s presence. Head keeps the reader questioning Sello’s reality.

As if this isn’t enough there is actually a real man in Elizabeth’s village named Sello, “Very little detail reached her about Sello, the living man, who drove a green truck about the village…”(28) So not only is Elizabeth imagining a “godlike” Sello, she starts talking about a Sello who actually lives in her village. As she intermixes the two characters, the reader becomes confused with which is which.

In the first thirty four pages of the book the story jumps around. The reader is introduced to Elizabeth, Sello, Dan and some other spirits. However Elizabeth’s interactions with the spirits are inadvertently interrupted with the narration of Elizabeth’s upbringing. It is revealed by another character that Elizabeth’s mom was crazy, “Your mom was insane.”(16)  The book is a fog of insanity.

Bessie Head not only has a main character confused with insanity, she uses techniques that make her writing seem insane. She keeps the reader jumping around and second guessing. We are not given a concrete storyline with a definite course. I would argue that Head through her chaotic writing has created a perfect portrayal of insanity.

A Question of Power seems to be Head’s attempt at conveying the horrors of mental illness. The reader feels the insanity portrayed in the text. As I read the book it felt almost as if I were going insane.