Essay Questions

What makes Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia a postmodern text?

Hornbacher consistently exploits intertextuality. To illustrate, in the introduction, Hornbacher launches with a quote from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Notes on the Netherworld The awakened and knowing say: body I am entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something about the body.” This philosophical assessment relates to the prefatory clarifications that Hornbacher makes vis-à-vis the repercussions of eating disorders on the body. Throughout the text, manifold illustrations of intertextuality are brought together as inaugurations of the chapters.

How does Hornbacher appeal to the Ethos?

Hornbacher avers: “This book is neither a tabloid tale of mysterious disease nor a testimony to a miracle cure. It's simply the story of one woman's travels to a darker side of reality, and her decision to make her way back. On her own terms.” This pronouncement deduces that all the explanations presented are factual; hence, they have not been embroidered to mesmerize readers gratuitously. Hornbacher’s actual familiarity with ‘Bulimia and Anorexia’ validates her as a realistic author, for she recounts her particular incidents which are more apposite than invented or reported cases.

How does ‘objectification consciousness’ influence Hornbacher’s mind-set regarding her body?

Hornbacher elucidates, “Somehow, I learned before I could articulate it that the body - my Body - was dangerous. The body was dark and possibly dank, and maybe dirty. And silent, the body was silent, not to be spoken of. I did not trust it. It seemed treacherous. I watched it with a wary eye. I will learn, later, that this is called ‘objectification consciousness.’ There will be copious research on the habit of women with eating disorders perceiving themselves through other eyes, as if there were some Great Observer looking over their shoulder. Looking, in particular, at their bodies and finding, more and more often as they get older, countless flaws.”

The “Great Observer” denotes the inauspicious Looking Glass Self which stimulates the enlargement of ‘objectification consciousness.’ Once an individual has inaugurated the mind-set vis-à-vis the jeopardy and obscurity that her/ his body replicates; henceforth, the motivation becomes eradicating the gloom and liability which the body personifies.

Elucidate the implication of citing Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus”.

Hornbacher quotes Sylvia Plath’s renowned pronouncement: “Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it is it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call.” The citation is a conspicuous intertextuality in Hornbacher’s text which hints at the Death Instinct that equates suicidal individuals (whom Sylvia Plath denotes) to the eating disorder victims such as Hornbacher. The Death Instinct heartens the negativity which disregards the perilousness of undertakings such as suicide, ‘Anorexia and Bulimia.’ Hornbacher’s tussle with ‘Bulimia and Anorexia’ is correspondent to Plath’s brawl with suicide.