SPIRALS OF THOUGHT AND STRUCTURES OF CARE: RELATIONAL NEURODIVERGENCE IN JOHN GREEN'S TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN

John Green's Turtles All the Way Down depicts neurodivergence as a relational phenomenon, which is the outcome of the interplay of lived cognitive experience and care structures. The present study gives a psychological study of Aza Holmes, the protagonist of the novel and explores how her obsessive-compulsive disorder carries experiential intensity as a lived and embodied reality rather than just as a clinical condition. The compulsive thought, anxiety, and intrusive cognition of Aza are brought out through the narrative devices like interior monologue, recursive structuring, and the recurrent spiral metaphor. The state of neurodivergence is attained by Aza through experiential consciousness and the interpretive frameworks, which are imposed on her by therapy, friendship and social expectations. Such frameworks aim to offer her a conditional structure but they meet shortcomings in describing her cognitive experience accurately.  The present study explores how the relational neurodivergence model in Green’s Turtles All the Way Down is based on care, ambiguity and narrative mediation. An attempt is taken to assert that mental health of an individual is culturally and relationally created and thus fix the novel in the context of literary and health humanities.