Sanity

It's always hard to hear about someone who is clinically insane who happened to hurt others in their state. I'm sure we all thought Casey Anthony had a few screws loose when she was a hot topic. I wont even talk about James Eagan Holmes during the Batman shooting. The morality of what these people may or may not have done is standard in the eyes of society: it's immoral to kill. However, we never really stop to think past that. I've only recently realized that during the times of their misdeeds, these people may have thought they were doing the right thing. That what they were doing was, indeed, moral. If they believed their actions were more, does that make them insane? What really defines insanity? Where and how easily is the line between sane and insane crossed ? Their reality, their thought process, during these times is something we can never fully understand.

                In the show, The Walking Dead, sanity is addressed pretty heavily.  The show opens with the main character and leader of the main group, Rick Grimes in the hospital during the beginning of the apocalypse, left there by his best friend at the time, Shane. While Rick is in a coma, Shane sleeps with Rick’s wife, Lori, and instills his own standards on Rick's son, effectively taking Rick's place in the family. By the time Rick returns, Shane's become quite comfortable with his situation, inflaming a constant struggle for leadership and for Lori’s affection. Rick is eventually forced to kill Shane, and Lori eventually has a baby and dies while giving labor- we just don’t know whose baby it is.  

                Regardless, when Lori dies, Rick seems to die too. Immediately, he hears the phone ring and speaks to all the characters who have previously died on the show. Just to emphasis this - he speaks to dead characters. Not in a zombie-like way, which would be completely understandable for the show. He talks to humanized versions of the dead characters. He hasn't traveled back in time, and its certainly not the twilight zone, he's just a little crazy. They tall him that they are in a safe-haven and that he should join them. Is this his way of coping with the idea of killing himself? He then constantly searches for random hallucinations of his lost love. Is he trying to find Lori? Is he trying to find his sanity? Is he just trying to find himself? Such a mental reaction wouldn't be considered uncommon in such a dystopia. In fact, its happened to other characters on the show as well. Shane has a similar loss of clarity when he is cast aside by Rick's family. 

                Rick’s sanity seems to be bought on by regret. Regret that he didn't say “I love you” to his wife before she died. Regret that he had to kill his best friend and couldn't save his wife. It's hard to say specifically what Rick was thinking, or why he actually went insane. This brings up a great question though, what causes insanity in general?

                I'm no psychiatrist, and even if I was I wouldn't be qualified to answer such a question. In actuality, sanity is just something we made up. It's a concept that more or less coincides with normality. It's a term defined by society to explain how a person views reality. If a person is sane, their reality is the same as everyone else's, and is thus considered reality for that purpose. However, reality, like beauty and sanity, is manipulated by the eyes of those who view it. Insanity IS reality for a clinically insane person. That reality is how an insane person copes with whatever harsh hits life has thrown at him. We're working with very abstract concepts here, so stay with me.

               The show seems to point towards an answer to this question of a cause. “A loss of something.” No, I don't mean a loss of sanity, that's too obvious. In the show, Rick loses his wife and, thus, loses touch with reality for his longing. Meanwhile, Shane lost what he considered to be a relationship with Lori. Although, I don't think that this completely drove him over the edge. He also lost his position in the group as the leader to Rick, which is what really seems to irk him. Together, Rick and Shane have lost their old lives as friends and partners. These are components that made up each individuals life and happiness. The loss of something so real to you, something that you hold so dear, your definition of your own life, is what causes insanity.

                  Just to further abstract the idea of insanity, there is no specified set of actions or predictable behavior that point out insanity. Insanity manifests itself in many different ways, both in and out of the show. Both Rick and Shane seem to react differently to losing their minds. Rick has hallucinations, while Shane dreams of vicious actions, plans to make the group dynamic implode and turns into an overall murderer (mind you, he was a police officer before the apocalypse, so he has a good sense of right and wrong). Rick seems images of Lori, the thing that would make him happy. Shane projects his happiness as being the leader and being with Lori. He loses his mind to achieve this happiness. Is reality and sanity just our own individual projections of happiness?

What may seem to refute this notion is that Rick comes back to sanity. However, maybe it’s because his idea of happiness has shifted to his son’s and daughter’s survival. It’s hard to prove or refute this idea because sanity is such an unknown and hard to understand topic. One would need to become clinically insane and actually return to sanity in order to truly understand what is going on. However, the idea of sanity within the show is something that has been bought up multiple times. I highly doubt this is the last we've seen of this topic.