Its Kind Of a Funny Story Reading Response

Sabina Chackerian 802  Reading Response to “Its Kind of A Funny Story”

The book “Its Kind of a Funny Story” By Ned Vizzini, is about teenage boy named Craig Gilner who struggles with anxiety and depression. He goes to many therapists to get to the bottom of his issues, but his everyday life gets harder and harder with girls, friends and high school. One night he can't take it and almost kills himself. He ends up in a mental hospital held captive until he is able to deal with his issues. Throughout the story we can see that people often don’t show their mental state through their actions.

Craig pushes himself to get into a advanced school by studying hard. We can see that the work at school is taking a toll on him and giving him more stress and anxiety from his perspective but he doesn’t show his internal feelings. It states in the text his mom says “Craig, I'm being honest, I've never seen someone work as hard as you did getting into this school. You deserve a little break and you deserve to feel proud.” Here we can see that his mother might be sensing the fact he is overworking himself. “In December, 3 month into Executive Pre-Professional, I had stress vomiting for the first time.” This quote shows that he had been under so much stress at school building up to this. The fact this occurred shows that when he was stressed out he didn't ask for help, and he kept it inside. Now it is effecting his life much more severely and in a way he can no longer hide.

Craig is often being compared to his best friend, . We can tell that he pushes to be his best but we see he is weakening internally. One example is when he has a really big crush on this girl, Nia. later he says “Nia’s eyes said, ‘You’re cool but you're not as cool as Aaron.”  This shows that he is so willing to give up his self image just based on the actions of one person, and he has low self esteem, but he doesn’t even talk to his best friend about this. Later it says “The really cool thing about Nia...’ Aaron was saying, and he started to go in anatomical details, things about her that I didn’t need to hear.” Here we can see he is tuning out his best friend just to protect himself, this keeps a normal outside appearance but on the inside he is getting depressed over what his friend is saying. The issue has now grown into something he has no control over. At, the beginning when they were just friends if he talked to his friend about his feelings for this girl, he might not have started dating her in the first place.

This weakening internally for the sake of externally looking better leads Craig to where he is. but when he can come to terms with where he is, at the hospital, and the fact that people are aware of his issues, is when he can begin to get better. The author did a good job of teaching the reader this. I now understand people's desire to mask serious issues from people they are close to. People can be scared that this will make the people they share their feelings with be more distant , and they can feel be scared of being vulnerable. Teens can often feel a lot of pressure that can lead to bigger issues. It is important that they learn to except them and not hide them, like many do, in order to help them get better.