Anthropocene Essays - Mental Compartmentalization

By Colin Udall

I adore the fantasy of reading. Turning pages with my fireplace dimly lit and smoky jazz music humming from my turntable. Once I get this image in my head, it sticks with me like molten sugar, burning until I give in and read a book. This last happened to me a month ago and the book I decided to read was “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut. It happens, however, that my reading of the novel was unlike my fantasy, as it usually goes. I read in between dull classes and homework procrastination. I find that it's always easiest to read in between proper work or when you have other responsibilities at hand. I think this is because reading is an escape that requires some level of mental work.

If you’ve read “Slaughter-House Five” then you know it is a war book completely void of heroism or valor in its storytelling. The war aspects are focused entirely on slaughters and tortures. Reading this in amidst my sleeping classmates in science felt strange. Talking about the big themes and pictures with my English teacher felt strange. Thinking about it from the comfort of my own bed felt strange. So I unknowingly did what so many of us often do and boxed any thought of that book into a subsection of my mind. When I read, talked, or thought about the themes of “Slaughter-House Five,” it was solely that, discussion of the book. Allowing any spillover of the humanitarian crisis the novel presented me with was strictly prohibited.  

This, of course, was not done knowingly. Whether it was out of an unconscious fear of what the subject matter meant for my own life or beliefs or some other psychological mechanism, I am unsure. The only reason I recognize the subjugation of heavy material in my head is because of an essay I am writing on the topic of Mental Compartmentalization. I have done it many other times in retrospect: therapy only exists in my therapist’s lounge chair, family issues only exist at home. Where do I exist? Am I the whole sum of many untethered parts or someone who exists separate of those parts?

I might subjugate those thoughts onto this paper. Never to expand or ponder them without the lens of “this is a school assignment.”  In many ways writing this paper was alike my fantasy of reading. I wanted to pour my thoughts onto this page as if I was some scholar writing my dissertation. Yet I put to the side the weight and burden of the concept itself. Keeping them here in these words.

So as to willfully box away my thoughts of the matter, I don’t give Mental Compartmentalization a rating at this time.