PART IV. Oh Donnie, the existentialist! (A general post that tracks his growth)

Donnie is not doomed to a certain fate. Perhaps this should have come first, but time is all jumbled anyways.

Doomed is a word that comes up when the family relocates to a hotel after the jet engine crashes in their home (that is, when Donnie is not there to die.) The father mentions a classmate that had died on his way to prom- everyone said he must have been doomed. Gretchen, Donnie's girlfriend, also seems doomed: her stepfather stabbed her mother in the chest four times. Even though they relocate to Donnie's town, the last we hear is that her mother has disappeared and her home shows signs of a serious struggle. Gretchen cries to Donnie, "I guess some people are just born with tragedy in their blood." An existentialist denies the concept of "doom" - quite simply because we choose our actions that determine our future. There is no specific fate designed or laid out for us.

It may seem so, but Donnie is not doomed. I have said he is our own existentialist Christ, because in the movie he makes the ultimate sacrifice and chooses to save others. It is ultimately his choice to die, and he is fully empowered to make this choice.

However, at the beginning, it is clear that this is not true. Donnie is held under the control of a variety of forces that keep him from realizing the power of choice: from his therapist's giving him anti-psychotic meds to his diagnosis as a paranoid schizophrenic, Donnie is labeled as troubled kid who has been victimized by his society and even his own brain. Similarly, the therapist's hypnosis technique deprives Donnie of his self-consciousness (not meaning insecurity) much like how Frank deprives him of choice through trance/sleepwalking. Thus, when Donnie bursts the water pipe at school and jams an ax into a school statue, his graffiti cry for help "They made me do it" resonates as an anti-existentialist excuse.

There is, however, a turning point in Donnie. While the therapist may impede Donnie on his path to full self-realization (through meds and a diagnosis), she also provides him with key guidance. Donnie speaks of Frank (or God, as the therapist assumes): "I have to obey him or else I'll be all alone. I won't be able to figure it out." This is not true though, which Donnie proves to us. Yes, Frank helps him see into the future and guides him, but Donnie also discovers truth by himself, as he explores these concepts with his therapist, his science and english teachers, and even Roberta Sparrow's book. Donnie continues to discuss what he has discovered, his fear that there is a portal in the sky that will open time up beyond a linear dimension. The therapist replies with a statement that resembles Sartre's prose in Existentialism is Humanism: "If the sky were to open up, there would be no rule, no law. It would only be you and your memories, the choices you've made, and the people you've touched." This is true: an existential world is a lawless one, but not in a negative way. We are left we our choices and our character. We are left by those we touch with our choices and with our character.

So Donnie, by his final choice of death, is under no influence of meds, hypnosis, sleepwalking or even Frank's words. He is alone, responsible, and willful. Words resonate with him, as he examines the recent past's events: the recently deceased Gretchen's words stick with him, "What if you could go back in time and take all those hours of pain and darkness and replace them with something better." Now Gretchen is of course talking about a product pitch for science class that gives children pleasant visuals as they sleep, but it fits so well with Donnie's final moments. What that "something better" is, he does not know, but he realizes his choice is to try and replace those hours of pain and darkness. He is lucid when he makes this choice, he has not (as is poetic) slept all night. Has not slipped from consciousness. He lies awake in bed, wide awake, in laughter as he awaits his death. Is his laughter a sign of madness? No- it is that laughter that comes over us when everything suddenly makes sense- it is a laughter of relief, of understanding, of acceptance, and maybe, however sad it may seem, of joy.

Rosie