“Frank Was Dead”

In the book Supermarket, insanity is expressed through the character Flynn.

“I couldn’t control my thoughts or my body. My head felt like it was underwater. Flashes of numbness shot down my fingers. The lights flared again and it felt like I could literally see this other me by my side, if for only an instant” (Hall, 51). Flynn suffers from many mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, and we can identify signs of that in this quote from the text. 

Real vs. fake, dreams vs. reality, and controller vs. controlled all of these oppositions are represented in Supermarket. Bobbie Hall depicts all of these and they go hand in hand with the mental illness that Flynn is suffering from. Do his illnesses affect these ideas? Yes, “real vs. fake” is definitely affected. In the text, I can tell that this idea is affected because of the character Frank. Frank is a character that Flynn made up, he talks to him and talks about him like he is real however as the audience we know he is not real. 

“Who are you talking to?” asked Ted.”

“Frank,” I said, turning my head to look. Frank was nowhere to be found” (Hall, 56). Eventually, Flynn does admit that Frank was only real to him. “Well, this man, he wasn’t flesh and blood. He was an illusion I created in order to finish my novel. If I didn’t finish my novel, dark things would have happened. My deluded mind made Frank real to me. But Frank became a part of me. He was me. He was another identity in my mind, an alter ego. I guess originally I created him because of Lola, my ex-girlfriend. Or ex ex, I guess. Lola broke up with me because I never finished anything. When she broke up with me, something snapped. I became so desperate to finish a book that it literally drove me insane. I created a main character I believed in so much that he began to take control over me. And before I knew it, my mind had split into two. I was no longer just me” (Hall, 169). Dreams vs. reality; dreams are things that we have the desire to fulfill and they range from a dream career, or a dream house, etc. That can differ from your reality, for example, you could dream to be a successful writer when in reality you work in a grocery store. “This place is kind of a killer of dreams” (Hall, 66). This description shows us the reality of working at the supermarket vs. Flynn’s dream to be a successful writer. “The codes which manifest themselves through connotation function endlessly to repeat what has been written in other books and portrayed in other films, and so to reproduce the existing cultural order” (Silverman, 239). Cultural codes “control all the other codes”. In other words as a society, we see certain things portrayed in films and books that we can register with because we have seen it before. In Supermarket we can see that Flynn is struggling with mental illness along with other problems in his life such as writers’ block. We can recognize this in the text because we have seen it portrayed before, so we can better recognize the signs and details in the text suggesting it. 

What are the controlling values in Supermarket? Controlling value: Reaching out to others for help allows one to live a healthy and happy life. Counter idea: Refusing help from others leads to insanity.  Reaching out to others for help may allow one to live a healthy and happy life, however, accepting help from others can leave you vulnerable and open to deceit. This can easily lead to being tricked which is why it was so easy for Flynn to be tricked by Frank.

“Listen, Mia, I’m fucked up, okay? There’s no way around it… I’ve got fuckin’ problems. And to be quite honest, you’ve got problems too, or you wouldn’t be standing here with such a mess!”

“I came here to tell you I’m leaving, remember?” she said with a smart-ass tone and smirk to match. It was so hot.”

“I can kill Frank” (Hall, 225).  On the other hand, the counter idea: Refusing help from others leads to insanity, can also keep you from being taken advantage of. However, we can see that refusing help from others can lead to insanity for instance Flynn only gets worse when he refuses to seek treatment or take his medicine. 

The second controlling value that appears in Supermarket is the controlling idea: Following your dreams leads to fulfillment and success. Counter Idea: Accomplishing nothing leads to emptiness. “No matter what happens, finish the book! No matter what happens, finish the book! Stay inspired, do anything to finish this book! Finish the book! Your life depends on it” (Hall, 50). The idea of stopping at nothing to get what you want can lead to fulfillment and success but on the other hand, it can cause more emptiness than not accomplishing anything at all. “My mind was truly hyperattentive, and I needed to chill the fuck out. Writing this novel was messing with my head. I mean, even in this moment, I wasn’t fully present. I couldn’t just enjoy something I had fantasized about for weeks” (Hall, 83). Stopping at nothing to complete something means you may not be living your life because you are so focused on pushing forward you aren’t looking around and enjoying yourself. However, Flynn accomplishes fulfillment in a different way at the end of this book his “sanity”: “Frank was dead, and I was sane. In the supermarket” (Hall, 267).