Rick Sanchez: Smartest mans guide to loosing your mind

Rick Sanchez is an amazing character in this day and age with the wide spread awareness of mental illness being on the rise, and peoples concern and desire to learn about it. Rick resembles, from what I have observed, the underlying signs of some forms of mental illness and the havoc it can wreck on your world, everyday life and perception of your world/universe and in those we can see the downsides of freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Rick and Morty follows an alcoholic grandfather and his mindless adventures with his grandson through the endless universe and dimensions. While this is all endless fun and something Rick has done long before his grandkids were around I think these things might have a small bit of symbolism to real world values we hold in this country. Rick has an endless amount of knowledge that he freely pursued by his own will, a call to freedom we have and hold so dear in America. One of the most basic things we hold dear as Americans is our freedom, freedom of speech, the pursuit of happiness, things we sort of take for granted. Rick exudes freedom exploring every crack and crevice of the universe while creating practically anything his mind can imagine. With this power brings him great trouble to come.

While Rick may be the smartest man in the universe he also suffers from his actions in unspoken ways. In a recent episode of Rick and Morty there was a scene of Rick getting drunk and basically screaming at himself a million time over and over again at why he is such a terrible person, and no body will ever want to be with him again. According to the Film Theorist, Ricks acts of alcoholism and lashing out are just the underlying symptoms of depression, which when you add everything together with his personality it all makes sense. He blames himself for all the misfortune he has brought upon everyone's (mostly those he cares about) lives falling apart, and it turn this knowledge makes him sad. An irrational emotion from his perspective but at the very least an emotion one he doesn’t know how to cope with since his craft and life has consumed him too far to go back. We have been giving the chance in this life to live with liberty and do as we please as long as we don’t step out of our boundaries and hurt other people, Rick had that chance to, and when taken too far he destroys his whole life with his loved ones. While liberty can be liberating, too much will just give you a substantial amount of power if you have the determination. Which Rick did.

Finally we see Rick struggling with the pursuit of happiness. You see Rick has spent all his days chasing endless adventure throughout the dimensions, but what has he been looking for honestly. Well according to Film Theorist this can be summed up for his search for happiness. Rick has seen so much and done so much that has excited him while also ruining him, and his main way of coping like said before has been alcohol. This, while being a temporary solution, has been his only answer for making himself honestly feel something which is quite rare in his case. While he may be destroying his life in some ways his pursuit of happiness is an American value we do hold dear.

Rick Sanchez in my opinion is the image of the American dream taken to a whole new level of twisted, loss and ultimately loss of sanity. He shows what happens when things given to us as our birthright get abused to the worst degree and how they can completely tear you apart.