Externalizing the Internal in Shusterman's Challenger Deep

Challenger Deep, a young adult novel by Neal Shusterman, tackles the complex reality of being a schizophrenic (or schizoaffective – it is not made entirely clear in the story) teenager. The entire novel is presented from the point of view of Caden Bosch, a fifteen year-old boy who is slowly disconnecting from and then eventually reconnecting to his surroundings. Caden suffers from deep anxiety, paranoia, auditory hallucinations and eventually, fully immersive delusions. Although Caden moves through the world around him, whether it is school, home, and eventually a mental hospital, the heavy lifting of the story occurs in his mind. To capture the shifting perceptions and mental alacrity of Caden, Shusterman employs a number of techniques, and only a few of the many complex methods of externalizing Caden’s internal struggle are discussed below. First, Shusterman uses point of view changes from first to second to highlight times when Caden is completely disconnected from his own mind. Se…