Theme:
Lack of Relationship
Augusten Burroughs has many relationships, yet known of them are very stable. His relationship with his mother and father is violent and dismissive. According to Augusten, "the one activity my father and I did do together was
take the garbage to the dump" (13). This relationship shows that they aren't very close can be symbolic to their relationship. That their relationship was not good and could be compared to the trash. His mother on the other hand, was mentally unstable and could not take care of Augusten; so she dumped him onto her odd physiatrist. Another relation that was not stable, was Augusten's relationship with a thirty three year old man named Neil Bookman. Not only is Augusten in very complicated relationships but he also lives in a house full of misleading relationships. Dr. Finch has one wife, Agnes, yet no one treats her as a mother or a love. Everyone in the house treats her more like a slave then an actual human being. Dr. Finch, along with have a "wife", he also has many other lovers in his life. Dr. Finch's children are also very strange, Vickie ran away when she was young to go live with hippies; and Hope is constantly told that she is Dr. Finch's favorite daughter. All relationships in the memoir are lacking an attachment to the other person, except for the very unique and special relationship between Natalie and Augusten.
take the garbage to the dump" (13). This relationship shows that they aren't very close can be symbolic to their relationship. That their relationship was not good and could be compared to the trash. His mother on the other hand, was mentally unstable and could not take care of Augusten; so she dumped him onto her odd physiatrist. Another relation that was not stable, was Augusten's relationship with a thirty three year old man named Neil Bookman. Not only is Augusten in very complicated relationships but he also lives in a house full of misleading relationships. Dr. Finch has one wife, Agnes, yet no one treats her as a mother or a love. Everyone in the house treats her more like a slave then an actual human being. Dr. Finch, along with have a "wife", he also has many other lovers in his life. Dr. Finch's children are also very strange, Vickie ran away when she was young to go live with hippies; and Hope is constantly told that she is Dr. Finch's favorite daughter. All relationships in the memoir are lacking an attachment to the other person, except for the very unique and special relationship between Natalie and Augusten.
all trust no rules
Throughout Running with Scissors Augusten never really has any one to tell him what to do. Not having any rules in his life never really bothered him until he grew up and realized it wasn't a good thing for no one to be setting rules. Deidre nor Dr. Finch ever set boundaries and Natalie and him take that to their advantage, by dropping out of high school and laying around the house, not really doing anything with their life. But Natalie say to Augusten in the memoir, "Don't you ever just feel like we're chasing something? Something bigger. I don't know, it's like something that only you and I can see. Like we're running, running, running?"(209) What she means when she say this is that they are not doing anything with their life; she finally realizes that she is eventually going to have to do something other than sit around with her life. By the end of Running with Scissor both Natalie and Augusten focus not on getting into trouble, but final give themselves rules, something that none of their care takers ever did, and accomplish wonderful things.
The search For normality
No matter what Augusten does in his life he is never really normal. He comes from a family with a mother who has psychotic break downs, married an abuse alcohol, then is discovered to be a lesbian. After his mother gives him up he moves in with a family that is even less normal. Augusten is envious of many people because they seem so happy being his definition of normal, but what he doesn't realize is that his experiences shape the person he becomes. Without these abnormal experience he would not have met his best friend Natalie.