Category: Reading Response

Whittington Response 1 (Berger)

Hannah Whittington

Professors Thrailkill and Rivkin-Fish

ENGL 264

26 January 2020

In “A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor” John Berger and Jean Mohr explore how and when stories develop from traumatic events causing injury. The most striking sentence in this piece to me was: “The man would tell the story many times, and the first would be tonight in the village. But it was not yet a story. The advent of the doctor brought the conclusion much nearer, but the accident was not yet over” (Berger & Mohr 17-18). When do events in our lives transition from our present to a sequence of events from the past that we can narrate? Later in the passage, the doctor comments “’You know Sleepy Joe?…He was trapped under a tree for twelve hours before any help came”’ (Berger & Mohr 19). This event, which is now a story, was not always one. Likewise, though the story of the man with the crushed leg is not a story yet it will be in the future. In class, we discussed how illness interrupts our stories. However, Berger and Mohr’s story seems to argue the opposite. Illness and injury become a part of our personal life stories, and become stories for other people to tell. It is true that the man’s leg injury will likely interrupt his life, his career, and his functionality. However, it is not the end of a story but the beginning of a new one, for him and for the people around him who witnessed this event take place. This is important because even traumatic events contribute to our identities, not just positive ones.

Works Cited

Berger, John and Jean Mohr. A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country       Doctor. Vintage International, 1967. pp. 17-23.

Reading response 1: “On Being a Cripple,” Nancy Mairs, section starting from “First the matter of semantics” and ending in “It is the word I use to name only myself.”

In this portion of her personal essay, Nancy Mairs contrasts the semantics between “crippled”, “disabled”, “handicapped” and “differently abled”. She is intent on explaining her choice of “crippled” and more so on emphasizing that it had been her choice in coming to this conclusion. By doing so, Mairs indicates a successful quest narrative in which she has been able to redefine herself through the exploration of semantics—as a woman who has been able to “face the brutal truth of her existence squarely.”

At the same time, Mairs explores how society’s use of semantics regarding people diverging from the norm tends to hide/deny the true experiences of illness/poverty rather than treat them as equal. She makes a pointed criticism when she says that some realities don’t “obey the dictates of language”—that the shift for more inclusive terms has also been to create a societal hegemony, a way to escape the uncomfortableness of encountering those perceived to be as less fortunate. Her denial using such words, then, takes on the larger responsibility of raising a voice for a better understanding of people with similar disabilities.

This portion is also unique in that the level of self-confidence and determination is unmatched throughout her essay. She takes her stand as a “cripple,” and dominates this three paragraph portion with phrases like “I choose,” “I made the choice,” “I want”. Through the “I _______”
format, Mairs puts forth her most confident self as if to establish it as her most dominant identity, the self she would like her readers to remember. At times, her over-justification of “cripple” and her almost forceful positivism reveals the underlying chaos narrative: despite her success in creating a new self, she is constantly struggling to keep her other uncertain, hateful, and hurting selves at bay.

Response to A Fortunate Man

Kyle Lambert

Profs. Rivkin-Fish and Thrailkill

ANTH 272

1.26.2020

The second vignette in John Berger’s A Fortunate Man recounts the relationship between a country doctor and his patient/ex-patient who is now described merely as a “woman of about thirty-seven.” The story truly begins ten years prior, when the doctor first encounters the woman and attempts to address the cause of a cough. The doctor is quick to conduct scientific inquiry on the woman, ordering a chest X-ray and allergy test, and though he recognizes something emotionally troublesome is proliferating below the surface of the symptoms, the doctor fails to elicit explanation. The woman becomes zoomorphized by her illness and lack of pertinent treatment: she is described as having round rabbit eyes that twitch like a rabbit’s nose, trapped in the cage of her sickness, and frozen as if stalked by a predator. Her agency in life is lost as she “survives on steroids” and “seldom leaves the cottage.” The doctor’s role as not only biological investigator but as social healer is both revealed and relinquished in this episode. Kleinman may diagnose that the doctor correctly identified the disease while ignoring the woman’s illness; Frank may perceive this aborted restitution narrative as indicative of modern medicine’s insufficiency in healing that which is not inflicted by genes or germs. With “the girl with asthma” now reduced to her most animalistic mannerisms, the doctor is now cognizant of his shortcomings. In the final poetic passage, the woman is personified as a body of water who, once profound and full, has been diminished by nature and others to a bubbling brook of anxiety and worry. The river bend symbolizes the tempestuous time when the doctor may have been able to straighten the woman’s path but inadvertently allowed the illness to overcome. This reflection suggests the country doctor’s growth in his role as healer.

 

Works Cited

Berger, John, and Jean Mohr. A Fortunate Man. Granata Books, 1989.

Kleinman Reading Response

Will Chaiken

Professor M. Rivkin-Fish and J. Thrailkill

ANTH 272/ENGL 264

26 January 2020

Arthur Kleinman: The Meaning of Symptoms and Disorders

Arthur Kleinman attempts to distinguish the different meanings of symptoms and disorders as a way to expose the impersonal approach of healing by practitioners. His main distinction is between the subjective experience of “illness”, which “refers to how the sick person and the members of the family or wider social network perceive, live with, and respond to symptoms and disability.” (Kleinman 3), and “disease”, which “is the problem from the practitioner’s perspective.” (Kleinman 6). The latter can be described as the purely biological deviation from “normalcy” that healers, in their many cross-cultural forms and practices, attempt to remedy. This view taken by healers can be seen as problematic. Kleinman states, “Illness problems are the principal difficulties that symptoms and disability create in our lives.” (Kleinman 4). Examples include the frustration involved with not being able to walk up the stairs, or the failure from the inability to focus on homework with pestering chronic aches and pains, or the anger in feeling that no one else knows the pain one feels. No two experiences of illness are the equivalent in the same way no two humans are equivalent in terms of biology and experience. The problem Kleinman seems to be highlighting is the accidental ignorance regarding the unique experience of “illness” from person to person. A practitioner might view multiple cases of epilepsy the same way or from the same lens without taking into account how the patient is actually experiencing the disorder. With the awareness of individuality regarding “illness”, healers could more appropriately interact with patients, attempt to understand their disorder in a more holistic sense, and provide better patient care altogether. Awareness of the fact could also sooth the patient when feelings of not being understood arise. Kleinman provides a valuable insight into the healer-patient relationship and possible ways to improve suffering by making this distinction and highlighting the subjective experience of “illness”.

Arthur Kleinman, Ch 1 “The Personal and Social Meanings of Illness,” in The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Meaning, and the Human Condition (Basic Books, 1988), 31-55.

Physicians as Illness Narrative Components

William Shuford

Julio Villa-Palomino

ENGL 264

1/26/2020

Physicians as Illness Narrative Components

John Berger’s A Fortunate Man reflects cultural beliefs and conceptualizations of illness’ relationship to the physician. Berger’s vignette of the woodsman trapped beneath a tree helps show how the physician is a key component in the development of illness narratives. The piece implies that the doctor is the determinant of both the temporality and conclusion of the narrative. Berger frames this in writing “The [woodsman] would tell the story many times, and the first would be tonight in the village. But it was not yet a story. The advent of the doctor brought the conclusion much nearer, but the accident was not yet over…” (Berger 17-18). This passage recognizes that not only is an event unfolding, but that a story is forming. Furthermore, it claims that the conclusion is formed by the advent of the doctor thus yielding a concrete timeline and resolution.

This narrative framework is further implied in the story’s continual meditation that the doctor’s personhood, as perceived by the bystanders and patient, is inextricably tied to the advent of suffering. The story suggests this twice, the first time stating that the doctor’s “very sureness made it seem to them that he was part of the accident: almost its accomplice” (18) and later stating that “the doctor, whom they knew so well, seemed the accomplice of disaster…” (19).  This association reveals a cultural understanding of the doctor as a person who is in a sense othered based on their occupation (in the most basic sense of the word). This is interesting because it places the occupation of medicine in the same realm as race, religion, and nationality as categories of otherness.

Moving forward, Berger’s depiction of the cultural conceptualization of the doctor is interesting and provocative– yet dated. In present time people have much more agency over their health due to the advent of the information age. It is an interesting question whether this narrative relationship is still relevant in the present given that the doctor is no longer the sole symbol of health and wellness.

Works Cited

Berger, John, and Jean Mohr. A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor. Vintage Books, 1997.

Ashlyn Beach, Reading Response 1

Ashlyn Beach

Professors Rivkin-Fish & Thrailkill

ANTH 272

January 26, 2020

Reading Response 1

I chose to examine a paragraph from one of the stories from “A Fortunate Man.” This part of the story is striking to me because it reflects on the nature of stories. A man tells the doctor how the injured man is “suffering something terrible,” (Berger and Mohr 17). This man’s account is acknowledged by the third-person narrator to be a story; “The man would tell the story many times,” (Berger and Mohr 17). My first reaction to this was the question, what makes a story? This seems to be a significant question to consider, especially for our class. However, we get another piece of information about the nature of stories. The text says, “But it was not yet a story. The advent of the doctor brought the conclusion much nearer, but the accident was not yet over: the wounded man was still screaming…” (Berger and Mohr 18). There are many interesting things to unpack from these sentences. First, we learn that a story must have some sort of end or conclusion. We also learn that the injured man’s expression of pain is an indicator that the accident has not stopped, and therefore no conclusion has been reached. My interpretation of these points is that a person’s active suffering cannot be classified as a story, because it has not yet reached a conclusion. Another important aspect is the diction, specifically “advent” to describe the doctor’s arrival – the word means, according to Google dictionary, “the arrival of a notable person, thing, or event.” He is not just present in the scene, but is an important force in moving toward the conclusion of this story. Based on these interpretations, I see this scene as a “modern” or “expert” view of suffering, where the medical professional is the bringer of healing and stories of suffering.

 

Works Cited

Berger, John, and Jean Mohr. A Fortunate Man. Granata Books, 1989.

Carpenter Response 1: Sickness in relation to “On Being a Cripple”

Kayley Carpenter

Reading Response 1

Julio Villa-Palomino

Prompt 2 (Kleinman and pg 1 of “On Being a Cripple”)

Word Count: 298

 

In The Illness Narratives, Arthur Kleinman distinguishes illness, disease, and sickness, as they pertain to suffering and healing. He describes illness as the “innately human experience of symptoms and suffering” (3). Contrastingly, he defines disease as “the problem from the practitioner’s perspective,” reminding readers that not every culture of healing believes in biomedicine, and their epistemologies are no less valid in defining disease within their cultural narrative (5). Sickness differs from both terms, as Kleinman defines sickness as “the understanding of a disorder in its generic sense across a population in relation to macrosocial…forces” (6). Kleinman’s specific use of a third term, sickness, emphasizes that, in many cases, sickness intensifies the illness experience more than the disease, or diagnosis, could. This concept regarding societal understanding and connotations of a particular disease is especially prevalent in Nancy Mairs’ essay, “On Being a Cripple.”

Mairs describes her multiple sclerosis diagnosis and self-label of “cripple.” She uses imagery to depict her illness experience, including her fall in a public restroom. On page 1, the audience is enlightened on her illness experience and suffering from her declining health. Mairs also explains how her disease fits into a larger societal understanding of people functioning as less-than the average, healthy person—this broader understanding and labeling of an illness within a culture is what Kleinman deems sickness. The societal understanding of disability is that “cripple” is a demeaning synonym for “handicapped,” “disabled,” or “differently abled.” Mairs vehemently dislikes the latter, as it glosses over her illness politely, so as not to offend her. Mairs claims this term fails to acknowledge her own personal suffering. Without acknowledging that sickness is the societal understanding of the disease diagnosis, society lacks the ability to truly absorb one’s suffering and oftentimes furthers the burden of one’s illness experience.

First Reading Response

It is important to differentiate between sickness, illness, and disease as they all carry very different connotations about the suffering, environment, and person. According to Kleinman, illness refers to the personal experience of suffering, the disease is what the doctor is trained to see as the problem, while sickness is how to understand a disorder from the individual case in relation to social factors. This is important because disease and illness are more focused on the individual, while sickness accounts for how the suffering exists in a social and environmental context. This also will carry significance for the healing methods. When the physician attempts to heal the disease, they are disregarding the relationships and context of the problem and effects. The example that Kleinman gives is of tuberculosis. While the disease is tuberculosis as named by the physician, and the illness is the physical and mental suffering that goes along with tuberculosis, the sickness refers to the larger range of what is affected. It accounts for the relationship of tuberculosis to low-income houses and malnutrition, where some demographics are more likely to be at risk for the disorder. This is significant when thinking about healing- it is not about fixing the biology of the illness, but looking at the scope of where problems arise and how to heal social burdens and relations. When a physician attempts to heal a disease biologically, they are concerned only with fixing the disease. This puts too much emphasis on the symptoms of the individual, and not enough on the meanings of the individual’s illness experience. By “materialistic pursuit” the physician is looking only for biomedical and medical ways of healing disease, not examining the wider scope of potential conflict or difficulty.

Kleinman, Arthur. The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition, Chapter 1. New York: Basic Books, 1988.

Reading Response 1 Sakari Law

One thing I believe Kleinman wants the reader to reflect on is that, in our capitalist society, technology has been the focal point of medical treatment and progress. His argument considers a diverse range of cultural perspectives, feelings, and beliefs, and terms it as the “soft” concerns of medicine (9). Half of his reading provides the reader with examples of different culture systems across the world, which shows how much this understanding fills in “the space” between the practitioner and the patient. He provides multiple perspectives to give us multiple things to consider. It is a lesson that is needed in order to understand how a patient might view themselves as being a sick person and for doctors to provide the best treatment. In addition, several of his passages are titled “the meaning” of, whether that be of illness, sickness or disease. His intentions are to communicate with the reader that these are often times misunderstood and usually are not directly expressed.

Technology as being innovative medicine, however, is limiting and does not leave room for any of these meanings. It takes away that narrating experience, leaving the patient with “closed-ended practical issues,” because technology is used to simply control symptoms (20). This is the “radically materialist pursuit of the biological mechanism of disease.” He describes this quest as being “hard” and overvalued in medicine (9). As a result, medical workers become stiffened and unable to operate under pressures of moral perspective. It is as if we have completely forgotten that we are operating on humans, not robots.

And this is the product of a capitalist society, the current social circumstances of Kleinman’s reading and the “hot spot” that we are in.

Works Cited

Kleinman, Arthur. The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition. New York: Basic Books, 1988. Print.