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Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia-
 This poem dramatizes the conflict between..
 The man’s normal mind and his change from confusion to schizophrenia
 Lines 2-4 show that his change started with confusion and anger which Stevens shows by using words like ‘slamming’, ‘angry’, ‘scuffing’ and ‘stains’.
 Lines 5-8 tell how he furthered the process of becoming schizophrenic by shutting off some aspects of his mind (‘certain doors were locked at night’) and how his normal mind started to ‘disappear under a hardened crust’. Line 7 (‘dishes were left unwashed, ..’) show that some parts of his psyche were left literally ‘unwashed’ and neglected.
 Lines 9-15 outline this change explicitly.
 The ‘rooms’ described throughout the poem represent different aspects of his personality
 When the ‘rooms’ separated in lines 9-15, the change from normalcy to schizophrenia was completed.
 The ‘rooms’ come to represent his new personalities, separated from each other (line 12)
 Lines 16-19 all describe the degradation of the exterior of the house, symbolizing the degradation of the exterior of his person
 As well as how people view the house (him) as ‘mad’
 The first and last lines, ‘It was the house that suffered the most’ and ‘I was the house that suffered the most’, serve to demonstrate that before the process he did not realize that he was becoming schizophrenic, but after it was all done with, he knew well what had happened. Therefore showing that he now has closure on the subject.
 Throughout the poem there is an indirect reference of the house to the family’s crisis.
 The title ‘schizophrenia’ and the conflict of the house not only refer to the mental disease of the speaker but the conflicts of the family, therefore the house is stricken with the schizophrenia embodied by the family inside it.