The Asylum

Is America right? An America that Fuller indicts for not allowing people to fail.

Stuart, the son of a Southern sharecropper who was taught bigotry and hatred as a child, became cynical and angry with the country of his birth. He was captured in the Korean War and was brainwashed into becoming a Communist. Stuart was ordered to indoctrinate a fellow prisoner, but instead the prisoner's unwavering patriotism reformed him. Stuart's captors pronounced him insane and he was returned to the US in a prisoner exchange, after which he received a dishonourable discharge and was publicly reviled as a traitor. Stuart now imagines himself to be Confederate States of America General J.E.B. Stuart.


Trent was one of the first Negro students to integrate a segregated Southern university. He now imagines himself a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and stirs up the patients with white nationalist dogma.


Boden was an atomic scientist scarred by the knowledge of the devastating power of intercontinental ballistic missiles. He has regressed to the mentality of a six-year-old child.


Yet all of these people were put into these positions and expected to succeed. Perhaps they didn't ask to be there but felt pressurised to conform and do well. They were not given the option of saying they weren't strong enough and the pressure drove them insane.