Girl, Interrupted: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

One girl on the psych ward, Susanna writes, set herself on fire with gasoline before she was even old enough to drive. Her neck and cheeks scarred the most, leading Susanna to suspect that the gasoline had pooled in her collarbones. The girl, whose name is Polly, is covered in scar tissue—tissue which “has no character,” and is a “slipcover” meant to disguise what’s underneath. Susanna writes that Polly, despite her grisly attempt at suicide and prevalent burn marks, was “never unhappy,” and in fact provided kindness and comfort to those on the ward who were.

No one on the ward knows why Polly set herself on fire, and nobody dares to ask. Susanna wonders, over and over, what the moment of decision to kill herself had been like for Polly—if she had had a moment of “inspiration.” Susanna describes her own “inspiration,” explaining that she woke up one morning and decided that she needed to swallow fifty aspirin. She considers the cowardice of her own attempt compared to Polly’s, and wonders where and why Polly set herself on fire. Susanna writes that Polly’s ever-present smile had something underneath it—the indication that she hard “burned” fear and pain out of herself.

One morning, Susanna awakes to somebody crying loudly, but does not think much of it, as mornings on the ward are noisy, and there is often crying and fighting early on in the day. After breakfast, though, when the crying hasn’t stopped, Susanna begins to ask around about who’s crying. A patient named Lisa, who knows everything about everyone, tells Susanna that it’s Polly who’s been crying. As Polly continues wailing throughout the day, her crying becomes screaming and she begins to shout, “My face! My face!” As the women on the ward get ready for sleep and crawl into bed, they can still hear Polly screaming. Susanna realizes that while she will probably get out of the hospital someday, Polly is “locked up forever” in her ruined body.