Henry Darger, what is going on?

First and foremost, I’d like to say that In the Realms of the Unreal: the Mystery of Henry Darger was one of the most confusing things I’ve tried to understand in a long time. But, moving on.

            Henry Darger was extremely reclusive and didn’t make much of an attempt to meet new people or spend time with anyone but himself. He did talk to his landlords, his friend Bill, and one of his neighbors, but other than that, he didn’t have many other people in his life. When he did socialize, he usually just kept to discussing the weather and always “responded ineptly in social conversations”. He was creative in a very different, very personal way, which is why I think it was so hard to try and comprehend what was going on throughout the video. Personally, I think Henry was just different; he may have been on the border when regarding schizotypal personality. According to The Scientific American, a person doesn’t have to be diagnosed with Schizophrenia to show some of its effects. Yes, he did have a sort of “magical thinking” (which could be considered borderline schizotypal), but Darger was “different” in the way that he kept so much to himself. Even so, he wasn’t crazy. He apparently didn’t see his life as interesting, so he did the best job he could to fix it by creating. He talked to himself and created the types of things he saw as missing in his life and world.

In my opinion, Henry Darger was extremely creative. As weird as his work is, he did something that nobody else has ever done and probably will ever do. His art is vastly different than anything else ever created, so it should be noticed and seen as interesting. Not many people can say they’ve written a few-thousand page novel in their lives, and that alone is extremely impressive.