# "Driven Mad" as a Trope **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 26, 2024, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376 "2024-06-26T22:25:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/21 "2024-06-27T09:57:47Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > That’s not about _the_ Future. That’s fair. I actually misread the quote. It’s about _the future_, not sci-fi in general. Egan is undoubtedly sci-fi (among the hardest there is), but only some of his stuff is about the future. Or at least _our_ future. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/22 "2024-06-27T14:21:03Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Seemed to happen every day and twice on Tuesdays if the literature from that era is to be believed. If a novel reflected the same frequency of it’s plots in real life it wouldn’t be, well, _novel_. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/23 "2024-06-27T15:50:02Z")
There is that. As has been said of movies, a good show is real life with all the boring parts edited out. It’d be deathly exhausting to actually live through a month in the life of most TV or movie characters. But what a way to go! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/24 "2024-06-27T21:19:30Z")
This post contains spoilers for the ten-year-old novel (and subsequent Netflix film) _Bird Box_. The story hinges on the concept that the mere sight of a–something–(presumably an alien)–‘drives you mad’, to the point of murdering anyone around you and then yourself. This is said to happen instantly for most people, though some people just go on being ‘mad’ if they were that way to begin with. The creatures are never described in the novel nor shown in the show (I’m told–I’ve read the book but not seen the show). The show-makers initially wanted to include visuals of creatures based on characters’ “greatest fears,” though how your greatest fear could lead to you doing murders seems poorly-supported. (I could see having a Greatest Fear lead people to have heart attacks or other deadly reactions, but why would your Fear make you murder others?) At any rate, it was certainly “driven mad as a trope,” in spades. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2024, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/25 "2024-06-28T01:41:13Z")
All the time; check out “[female hysteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria)”. It’s an idea going back literally thousands of years in various forms. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2024, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/26 "2024-06-28T02:21:29Z")
Wasn’t there a Larry Niven story in which an alien planet had a cliff so high it would drive people crazy? That’s all I remember, so it probably wasn’t one of his classics. ---
**Author:** ![Nyvaak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Nyvaak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nyvaak)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2024, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/27 "2024-06-28T02:50:32Z")
I think that would be _A Gift From Earth._ It was part of his classic Known Space universe. All settlements on that particular world were on a single group of plateaus with enough height to project up out of the poisonous mists that covered the rest of the planet. But it wasn’t the height of the cliffs that drove people mad; it was the sense of looking into infinity (due to the vast, featureless mist) that caused people to become hypnotized. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2024, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/28 "2024-06-28T16:55:58Z")
“Plateau Trance” Niven described it by analogy to highway hypnosis. Not really “madness” or other kind of psychotic break. Just a temporary autohypnosis. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2024, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/29 "2024-06-28T17:35:39Z")
Opideus has to be a contender. He went mad and cut his eyes out when he discovered he had, as was prophesized, killed his father and married his mother ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2024, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/30 "2024-06-28T19:02:25Z")
Apparently dear @griffin1977 has been driven mad by the exertions of spelling “Oedipus”. And still fell short of his task. 😉 “Opideus” makes me think of the patron god of Mayberry. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2024, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/31 "2024-06-28T19:33:31Z")
Does Caitlin from _Clerks_ qualify? ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2024, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/32 "2024-06-28T20:33:24Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Apparently dear @griffin1977 has been driven mad by the exertions of spelling “Oedipus”. And still fell short of his task. 😉 I’m sure the ancient Greek dramatists would have had a great time with autocorrect as a plot device 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2024, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/33 "2024-06-28T20:44:57Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > But your thought suggests to me that the trope might be applied to female characters (much?) more often than male characters for much the same reasons. > > Those delicate female people just collapse under stress … poor things. > > BS, but perhaps culturally dominant BS at the time. Literature has always had a fascination with crazy women, especially around Victorian times (or at least those are the best examples I know.) This is partly based on the fact that a lot of women were having problems in those times, particularly the women who were rendered utterly useless by social convention. If a wealthy woman had children, she wasn’t the one raising them. But she wasn’t allowed to work, either. There was nothing really she could do with herself. So a kind of sickness set in that was characteristic of the time. Combine that with the physical effects of conforming to beauty standards such as disfiguring corsets and worse, women really were physically and emotionally fragile. The best madwoman example I can think of is the secret wife in the attic in Jane Eyre. Her madness came at least in part from being forced to live a life she didn’t want to, IIRC (it’s been a while.) There’s also a whole book from her POV called _Wide Sargasso Sea._ I haven’t read that one. It’s worth noting that a lot of times with these madwomen, their madness is framed as a result of injustice, something deeply tied to their gender. It’s as if there was some recognition of how crazy making it was to be a woman. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2024, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/34 "2024-06-28T20:57:54Z")
Interesting how 11-year Conrad Aiken was present at his parents’ murder/suicide, which by prevailing literary conviction should have made him immediately insane. But instead the main character in _Silent Snow, Secret Snow_ is a boy who only gradually retreats into his fantasy life, and with no noted traumatic incident. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2024, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376/35 "2024-06-29T10:18:38Z")
Three words: undiagnosed tertiary syphilis. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/driven-mad-as-a-trope/1003376.md?page=1)