Exploration of Guilt and Psychological Issues in Lisa Scottoline’s Someone Knows
Berdhisha P
Abstract
Psychology is the study of the human mind and behaviour that are affected by incidents that occur in an individual’s life. In the contemporary world, analysing the human mind is a vivid source for understanding the self. Literature and psychology have a close connection as the fictional or real characters mentioned in the text have a great part. Lisa Scottoline, an American author and attorney famous for her legal thrillers. Her fiction, Someone Knows (2020) deals with the life of protagonist Allie Garvey and the psychological issues she faced due to guilt, may a person escape from the hands of law but not from their inner conscience. The present article deals with Allie Garvey and Julian Browne’s psychological problems they faced. To understand deeply the inner conflicts about good and evil the characters were analysed using Sigmund Freud’s Id, ego, and super-ego.
Keywords: emotions, guilt, literature, psychology, thriller
Introduction
Literature is a piece of writing that reflects human behaviour, while psychological study analyses it. Moreover, fiction deals with fictional backgrounds, characters, and events that may impact real life somehow. Reading literature is a great way to build emotional intelligence and it is essential for understanding and empathy by connecting characters’ emotional journeys. The characters’ struggles can be comprehended through the anxiety or depression they undergo; this creates an emotional grief in readers.
Literature and psychology, two separate academic disciplines, come together fascinatingly at this crossroads where stories not only enlighten and delight but also provide windows into the workings of the human mind. These fields are mutually beneficial, each contributing to one’s knowledge of the other and giving distinctive viewpoints on what it is to be human. Literature provides a sophisticated examination of feelings, motivations, and psychological problems through the representation of characters, stories, and themes. Psychology offers the theoretical foundation for comprehending how people see, understand, and react to these literary devices.
Alpa Chaudhary in the article “The Psychological and Visionary Mode in Carl Jung’s Essay Psychology and Literature” states;
According to Jung, as the psychology is a study of psychic processes, it is obvious enough that psychology can be brought to accept upon the study of literature, because the human psyche is the womb of all his sciences and arts. On the one hand we may expect psychological research to explain the formation of a work of art, and on the other hand to reveal the factors that make a person artistically creative. The psychologist is thus faced with two separate and distinct tasks, and must approach them in completely different ways.
Lisa Scottoline is a contemporary American novelist famous for her legal thrillers. She won the Edgar Award for her excellence in crime writing. She turned from the law profession to writing to state the perspectives of female lawyers. Her novel Someone Knows (2020) beautifully sketches teenagers’ lives and their mistakes, a thought-provoking flashback that affects the present. Allie Garvey, the protagonist, along with her friends David Hybrinski, Sasha Barrow, and Julian Browne, played a prank on their new neighbor, went wrong and got killed. The fiction opens with the death of David, a friend of Allie, and it took her to find out the truth behind his suicide, which is a murder. This paper shows how Allie Garvey’s psychological battle ended when the truth was revealed.
No one is born evil; the environment the individual lives in and the situations they face are destined for what they are. Allie Garvey is a teen and kind-hearted girl. After the loss of her sister Jill, her mother was affected psychologically, and her father is trying to overcome it. Not only the parents but also Allie battled her emotions about her sister: “Jill was everywhere, in the very air. Her absence was her presence, and the girl who could never get air had become it” (13). The loss of a loved one creates loneliness, and when she meets David Hybrinski, her school crush and tennis player, his smile attracts her, and his caring words ease up her wounded heart. The girl Allie admired the most was Sasha Barrow, a beautiful, arrogant, and courageous girl. Admiring someone is very common in everyone’s lives. Julian, a friend of David and Sasha, whose mind is filled with love and filthy thoughts on Sasha. By chance, the four became friends in some situations, and Allie loved hanging out with David.
Allie feels shy and insecure about hanging out with others. Still, when David asks her to join them, for the first time she goes out at night, drinks alcohol, first kiss, and holds hands by sitting close to him giving her magical feelings that vanish all her worries. She was feeling something new, all for the first time, “. . . put his long arm around Allie. Her whole left side touched his body, and she felt something she’d never felt before” (219). In the case of Allie, as a teenage girl, she faces hormonal changes that create an attraction towards the opposite gender, David. That cannot be defined as love; it may just be an infatuation, which is often mistaken as love even in contemporary scenarios. In the fiction, David is indirectly shown as gay but he never fails to impress girls as he does not want to reveal his interest in the same gender on the other side he loves Julian.
The entry of a new neighbour Kyle Gallagher, turns down their lives topsy-turvy. Kyle accepts Sasha’s invitation and joins with them. The friends play a prank on him, which is Russian Roulette with an unloaded gun as per their knowledge. When Kyle presses the weapon, the bullet strikes his temple, and blood splashes, which was sketched by Scottoline, “Orange flame burst from the gun. The sound was loud as an explosion. Kyle slumped over sideways, his head misshapen and dark. His hair and T-shirt were drenched with blood. His body lay perfectly still, a gruesome, motionless shadow” (225). After this incident, all the four break their contact with each other and they never meet again until David commits suicide after twenty years on the same day as Kyle’s. However, they had been friends for some time but the mistake they made haunt them as a lifetime sentence.
Lisa Scottoline draws out how Allie underwent the guilt and the physical and mental changes that happened to her, “Allie was consumed with guilt about Kyle. Literally, consumed. She was eating herself alive, from the inside” (269). She was nervous all the time, tried all day, slept badly, and had stomach issues like ulcerative colitis, and intimacy issues because of “traumatic memory.” A feeling of regret and self-criticism are associated with guilt. The obese Allie loses pounds and becomes thin because of the stomach issues she faces. After years somehow overcame things but not completely. She loved and married Larry Rucci, a young lawyer. The guilt about the prank did not make her stay happy with Rucci and she even took tablets to avoid pregnancy. the guilt did not allow her to have a happy life with her husband. Her mind urges her to reveal the truth to Rucci but something stops her. This guilt not only created health issues but also relationship issues. It haunts her daily as she is not truthful to the person who loves and cares for her, stays on her side in all ups and downs, and trusts blindly. From the day the incident happens till after the death of David, many questions chase her and she doubts Julian all the time.
Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis. He has introduced the three components of personality called Id, Ego, and Super-ego to analyse the human mind. The person with an id has less patience level while those with an ego have minimal control and a person with super-ego has a good level of patience and control over themselves. The protagonist Allie has the personality of a super-ego. The guilt makes her to suffer a lot, she is the weakest and most emotional person in that group. She survived, loved, and married but has a complicated life which she later manages, becomes pregnant, and lives a happy life. When the novel reaches the climax, the crucial part as Allie does not give up instead, she helps herself to escape from the hands of Julian and reveals the reality. The situation becomes worse to better when Allie realises that she did nothing wrong to feel guilty, that feeling helps her to struggle and make things correct.
Carlos Tilghman-Osborne, David A. Cole, and Julia W. Felton in the article “Definition and measurement of guilt: Implications for clinical research and practice” states, “Experiencing guilt involves the perception that a person has transgressed rules of morality. For example, Harder and Greenwald’s (1999) definition clearly states that guilt ‘involves a sense of moral transgression’” (p.271).
David Hybrinski, good looking sports person who always wishes to shine better. Even he undergoes trauma because of Kyle’s murder. His condition was expressed as, “He (David) struggled with depression, and he had a drinking problem, and he’d been to rehab twice but he relapsed both times” (334). And it is said he finally committed suicide. Same as Sasha’s life, wants to be a model but the guilt somehow affects her, and not achieve her dreams. She is even on medication for anxiety and depression. Soon, she committed suicide but overdosed herself. All these were updated by Julian Browne. Analysing David and Sasha’s life through Freud’s concept they both are ego personality. If David had not talked about the incident to Julian after twenty years, he may not have died Sasha, a flirting person, extreme intake of wine that made her lose control and the atmosphere made her call one of her friends to enjoy sexual pleasure and drink her life.
Julian’s love for Sasha and his character to own her at any cost made him jealous of Kyle, whom she hugged and invited to be a part of their team. Sasha the elegant and gorgeous girl had company with a few other boys, which always irritated him. The environment he lived in spoils him. The divorced and careless parents, the mother wastes time blaming his father and his new relationship with a woman while his father gives him a lot of money and allows him to enjoy his life to the core.
As a teen boy, his mood swings made him watch Sasha’s bedroom often which gives him pleasure. This was said as, “. . . He pressed the binoculars to his eyes, aiming down into her room. . . . He’d seen her undress so many times, he knew every curve of her body. . . . She slept naked in summertime. . . . He was getting harder, and his right went automatically downward, squeezing himself” (33). This was his routine which created a strong lust on her and that thought ponders him to own her. Often, he is confused and the thoughts or questions about Sasha flash out like, “Where the hell was Sasha? Who was she with? Was she having sex with one of those seniors? Seniors got it all the time, didn’t they? They expected it! This made Julian crazy because he had loved her for forever” (96).
The long break in the friendship did not mean to forget everything, instead all haunted by memories and guilt. On the twentieth anniversary of Kyle, David drinks and starts to blabber about the incident, which all want to forget. In the meantime, Julian sketched to kill David. As he is depressed, he drinks alcohol and is not in a steady mood to do anything. Julian uses that time in favour of him and, “Julian had gotten the gun and shot David in the head with David’s own hand, so the blowback would be on his fingers” (347). This death again reunites the other friends.
After twenty years Sasha was back to Julian. He was refreshing the moments of that night if Kyle did not come there, she may have chosen him. Years later, he felt the same love and attraction for her wishing finally he is going to get her. Even here he failed as, “she was choosing another man instead of him, right in front of him. . . . I’m sorry, I don’t want you to talk to that guy. You know how I feel about you. “ (344). This created anger and he killed her by mixing pills in her wine. Julian, the villainous character enjoys her death, the pain she faces gives him pleasure. This shows him as a psychopath, if he needs something he will definitely get it but not in right way.
Julian watched her eyes close and her body relax. . . . She was so beautiful, even now. He took her hand, holding it in his, and he began to enjoy the experience of watching as her breath slowed down. . . . He watched her chest rise and fall, slower and slower, shallower and shallower. His loving gaze traced the shape of her breasts in her silky dress, . . . He knew what her breasts looked like, so there was no need to disturb her now. . . . She was completely still. . . . They’d shared this ultimate moment, joining them together, forever (347 – 48).
Julian from the beginning was in the urge of id and ego. His mind eagers to own Sasha immediately. As he receives the pleasure of watching her naked through the window, controls his hormones. Once he grew up, he was not ready to lose her. He was happy thinking that finally, he was getting her. Everything changed as she chose someone over him. Julian did not live a good life, the affection or relationship with other women, and the mentality that money makes anything. All these things give him a thought that whatever he needs or wishes he will achieve at any core. His eagerness to own her or fear of losing her made him kill her immediately. This clearly shows that when he grew up his patience level was zero and he comes under Freud’s id personality. This reminds the two rednecks from John Grisham’s A Time to Kill (1989), they both drink alcohol and in that moment when they saw a ten-year-old Hailey girl all of sudden, they took her near a river and raped her and beat her brutally. The pain of others cannot be understood in that moment, for them only their pleasure is mandatory and they will achieve that at any cost.
Carl Jung states, “Psychology and the study of art will always have to turn to one another for help, and the one will not invalidate the other.” Understanding the human psyche is not an easy task. In one fiction itself, the reader can go through various characters with various inner conflicts. Lisa Scottoline’s Someone Knows tears the mask the characters hid themselves for the past twenty years and reveals the actual faces.
Lisa Scttoline’s What Happened to the Bennetts (2022) brings out the guilt of a father for his beloved daughter’s murder. As the killers accidentally killed Allison instead of Mr. Bennet, he felt guilty for the things that happened. However, he fights for justice for his daughter and he succeeds in that. In the article “Guilt as part of PTSD; and ways to dismantle it” the writer defines guilt as, “A sense of guilt is a common feature of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), for a diverse range of reasons. . . . Other variations include regrets about decisions you made, feeling responsible for the actions of others, or guilt that your mental health affects loved ones”. The authors Claudio N Soares and Shauna Dae Phillips in their article “Hormones in the Treatment of Depression” points;
The influence of sex hormones on brain functioning and behavior have been cited as factors that reinforce gender differences observed in the prevalence and outcome of, and response to, the treatment of mental disorders. . . . the occurrence of depression becomes two to three-times higher for females than males. Furthermore, several studies suggest that the vulnerability to depression among subgroups of women increases during times of high hormonal fluctuation. . . . the interactions between estrogens and brain functioning have gained greater understanding. The hormones help the person to overcome the emotion of guilt that leads to depression.
John Grisham in his legal thriller fiction Sycamore Row (2013) brings out the guilt consciousness of Lettie Lang, which was created by the people of her race in the form of jealousy. She overcomes the negative people with the help of her daughter and lawyer Jake Brigance. Not only these two authors but many books and movies in the present world deal with guilt. Sometimes, guilt kills a person and sometimes it surprises others by overcoming that. The general idea to be captured always in the heart is, that whatever the situation is that does not matter. Feeling guilt for undone mistakes will destroy life whereas the guilt about the sin already done will create a consciousness to prevent one’s inner self from that sin. Lisa Scottoline in an interview with Dwyer Murphy said, “Bad decisions are so much more interesting than good ones.” As the bad decisions teach lessons and correct one’s path to reach the right destination. In conclusion, creating an awareness, and getting help from a psychiatrist will show a path to overcome the guilty consciousness. Pleading guilty is a good quality to clean up one’s own self. But pleading guilty for undone mistakes will affect not only the life of an individual but the whole family and people around them.
References
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