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55 pages 1 hour read

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1964

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Chapters 23-29Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 23 Summary

Feeling alive for the first time, Deborah starts to connect with the world around her, slowly gaining grounds privileges before moving back to the B ward. She falls in love with the world and realizes that, because she is alive, she must be of the same substance as other living things. Carla, who had become an outpatient, comes back, and Deborah can sense the shame she feels. She reaches out to Carla, and Carla explains feelings of loneliness and not feeling ready to take on the pressures of work and taking care of herself. Carla takes Deborah to the craft shop and shows her around, and afterward comments on the stigma attached to her as she entered the working world. She adds that some people are kind, but others seem to either pity her or see her as an object of fascination. On top of this, her doctor blames her, telling her to be less anxious around people.

Deborah admits to Dr. Fried that, as a Jewish person, she has formed a prejudice against non-Jewish people based on what she has been told all her life by her family and how she has been treated by others.

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