A common theme in “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” “Living in the Land of Limbo,” and the Thucydides text is how an illness has powerful and resounding effects. It is not too far-fetched to think that an illness is able to change a life, personalities, families, and society. In Lorrie Moore’s “People Like That Are the Only People Here,” the mother attends support groups with other parents to cope with her infant child's cancer diagnosis. The author writes about how this experience was a complete shock for her. In “the Death of Ivan Ilyich,” Ivan becomes bed ridden and diagnosed with an unknown affliction. Besides the physical changes, Ivan Ilyich becomes very rude to the people around him, especially his wife. While he and his wife always had some conflicts, things become especially tense after Ivan's illness. …show more content…
Doctors also played a significant role in these stories and poems, and were presented in a different light in each of the works. In some cases they were portrayed as unsympathetic and distant and in others, they were killed trying to save lives. The burden of caregiving was also played a significant role in the stories and poems, as the people caring for the sick also have their share of troubles and pains. Lastly, unlike medical texts, these works of fictions and poetry illustrate that they were able to show the emotional aspect of an illness and how it has an effect on everyone in some way. These literary works illustrate the tolls and burdens that come with both having and caring for illnesses. They also support how doctors should interact with patients, and the ability of fiction and poetry to shed light on topics that a medical text
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy tells the story of Ivan Ilyich, a man who deals with a mysterious illness through introspection. Until his illness, he lived the life he thought he was supposed to live. Like Candide, he was living in blind optimism. He assumed that what he was doing was the right thing because he was told as much. He had a respectable job and a family. Happiness, if it did occur to him, was fulfilling his duties as a husband and father. It was his sudden illness that allowed him to reflect on his choices, concluding that those choices did not make him happy. “Maybe I have lived not as I should have… But how so when I did everything in the proper way” (Tolstoy 1474)? Ilyich had been in a bubble for his entire life, the bubble only popping when he realizes his own mortality. This puts his marriage, his career, and his life choices into perspective. Realizing that he does not get to redo these choices, he distances himself from his old life: his wife, his children, and his career. All that is left is to reflect. This reflection is his personal enlightenment. He had been living in the dark, blind to his true feelings for his entire life. Mortality creates a space in which he can question himself as to why he made the choices he made, and how those choices created the unsatisfactory life he finds himself in
Almost doctors and physicians in the world have worked at a hospital, so they must know many patients’ circumstances. They have to do many medical treatments when the patients come to the emergency room. It looks like horror films with many torture scenes, and the patients have to pay for their pains. The doctors have to give the decisions for every circumstance, so they are very stressful. They just want to die instead of suffering those medical treatments. In that time, the patients’ family just believes in the doctors and tells them to do whatever they can, but the doctors just do something that 's possible. Almost patients have died after that expensive medical treatments, but the doctors still do those medical procedures. That doctors did not have enough confidence to tell the truth to the patients’ families. Other doctors have more confidence, so they explain the health condition to the patients’ families. One time, the author could not save his patient, and the patient had found another doctor to help her. That doctor decided to cut her legs, but the patient still died in fourteen days
This requires respect and compassion and prioritizing their comfort and values. I believe that as future physicians, we must be open to the different identities and perspectives of each individual in order to try to understand their beliefs and concerns. This level of empathy allows us to connect with patients on a deeper level and treat them with better quality care. Given this, I was immediately drawn to Georgetown’s Literature and Medicine program. Having taken a similarly named course during my undergraduate career, I recognize how literature, fiction or non-fiction, can create a compelling narrative that draws us into the mind of the writer and the characters. Medically related narratives raise issues that we will be confronted with later on in our careers, such as the respective responsibilities of the patient and physician, the role of medical ethics, and the value of compassion and empathy. This program will help me to become a more reflective and empathetic individual that places the beliefs and comfort of the patient at the forefront of my professional practice, and can competently cater to the needs of a diverse
William Carlos Williams was an American poet as well as a skilled physician in the medical field of pediatrics. Williams received his degree from the University Of Pennsylvania Medical School and operated a medical practice for over forty years in his home in Rutherford, where he delivered over two thousand infants. All this while, he kept the second floor of his home as a writing studio where he composed poetry as well as some of his memoirs as a practicing doctor. The Doctor Stories is a compilation some of the great works written by Williams and was compiled by Robert Coles. In the introduction, Coles comments on Williams’s “command of the art of clinical watchfulness” and goes on to call him a masterful observer and “an outstanding physician”. His claims can be confirmed by the memoirs Williams left which have complied in The
Through close analysis of the respective physicians illustrated within Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, and Oliver Sack's Awakenings, one is able to comment upon their respective duties. The duty of the doctor, as portrayed in these texts, can be seen to be highly varied and immensely diverse. Bram Stoker's Dracula deals with the role and duty of the doctor, and with the relationship between them and their patient extensively. Stoker, from a medical family himself (his brothers were doctors), creates a very stereotypical male doctor/female patient scenario with Dr. Seward and Dr. Van Helsing aiding Lucy Westerna and Mina Harper. Of the two physicians however, Seward comes to illustrate the failings of Victorian English society, and is also romantically involved with one of the patients (Lucy Westerna) which confuses and muddles the normal duties one would expect from a doctor to their patient.
This internal conflict is a result of the mistakes a physician makes, and the ability to move on from it is regarded as almost unreachable. For example, in the essay, “When Doctors Make Mistakes”, Gawande is standing over his patient Louise Williams, viewing her “lips blue, her throat swollen, bloody, and suddenly closed passage” (73). The imagery of the patient’s lifeless body gives a larger meaning to the doctor’s daily preoccupations. Gawande’s use of morbid language helps the reader identify that death is, unfortunately, a facet of a physician’s career. However, Gawande does not leave the reader to ponder of what emotions went through him after witnessing the loss of his patient. He writes, “Perhaps a backup suction device should always be at hand, and better light more easily available. Perhaps the institutions could have trained me better for such crises” (“When Doctors Make Mistakes” 73). The repetition of “perhaps” only epitomizes the inability to move on from making a mistake. However, this repetitive language also demonstrates the ends a doctor will meet to save a patient’s life (73). Therefore, it is not the doctor, but medicine itself that can be seen as the gateway from life to death or vice versa. Although the limitations of medicine can allow for the death of a patient to occur, a doctor will still experience emotional turmoil after losing someone he was trying to
Tolstoy immediately absorbs you into the novel by beginning with Ivan’s death. The actual death scene is saved until the end of the novel, but he shows you the reaction of some of Ivan’s colleagues as they hear the news of Ivan’s death. You are almost disgusted at the nonchalant manner that Ivan’s “friends” take his death. They are surprised by his death, but immediately think of how his death will affect their own lives, but more importantly, their careers. “The first though that occurred to each of the gentlemen in the office, learning of Ivan Ilyich’s death, was what effect it would have on their own transfers and promotions.” (pg 32) As a reader, you have to wonder how Ivan must have had to live in order for people close to him to feel no sadness towards the loss or even pity for his wife. In fact, these gentlemen are exactly like Ivan. The purpose of their lives was to gain as much power as possible with n...
I had the opportunity to read “Doctors” by Anne Sexton. My initial reaction to this text was that the poem is endearing, Sexton truly grasps the nature of not only doctors but also everyone who is involved with the care of a patient, from the doctors and RN’s all the way down to the CNA’s and Dietary Aids. All work with “herbs” whether it be a Doctor giving out painkillers or a Dietary Aid bringing a warm meal with a smile, all factors go into the “gentleness” and “do no harm” so that the patient will get better.
This is related to the theme to live without suffering because as Ivan is getting ready to die he complains about how he is in so much pain despite numerous doctor visits and medication. Tolstoy uses his complaints as indicator for the readers to know that Ivan does not want to die in pain but peace. A moment of this is when Ivan calls his family into the room and dies in front of them because he believes it will bring them joy.
Morace, Robert A. “Interpreter of Maladies: Stories.” Magill’s Literary Annual 2000 1999: 198. Literary Reference Center. Web. 6 Apr. 2010. .
Though illness stripped both Morrie Schwartz and Ivan Ilych of their hope for survival, their dissimilar lifestyles led each to a much different end. Morrie found himself in an overflow of compassion while surrounded by family, friends and colleagues. Ivan, on the other hand, found only the obligatory company of his wife and the painful awareness that no one really cared. Both characters ended their lives the way they lived them, as Ivan acknowledges: "In them he saw himself" (Ivn, 149). While Morrie poured himself into every moment of life and every relationship he pursued, Ivan skirted the dangers of emotion to live "easily, pleasantly, and decorously" (Ivn, 115). In the spirit of such an opposition, the two stories become somewhat like responses to each other. Morrie Schwatrz, proclaimed...
The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a story written by Leo Tolstoy in 1886. Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 into a Russian society. Tolstoy had a rough childhood growing up. By the age of nine, both of his parents died and he was force to become an orphan. As Tolstoy grew older, he became known for being a womanizer and gambler. He engaged in premarital sex with prostitutes and these women became his downfall. Then he went under an acute conversion. Although Tolstoy converted, he did not adapt the traditional beliefs of a Christian conversion. He rejected the idea of afterlife which plays a role in Death of Ivan Ilyich. This story is about the life of an average man named Ivan Ilyich, who faces the fact that he is eventually going to die. Death is very
In his novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy satirizes the isolation and materialism of Russian society and suggests that its desensitized existence overlooks the true meaning of life—compassion. Ivan had attained everything that society deemed important in life: a high social position, a powerful job, and money. Marriage developed out of necessity rather than love: “He only required of it those conveniences—dinner at home, housewife, and bed—which it could give him” (17). Later, he purchased a magnificent house, as society dictated, and attempted to fill it with ostentatious antiquities solely available to the wealthy. However, “In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling others like themselves” (22). Through intense characterizations by the detached and omniscient narrator, Tolstoy reveals the flaws of this deeply superficial society. Although Ivan has flourished under the standards of society, he fails to establish any sort of connection with another human being on this earth. Tragically, only his fatal illness can allow him to confront his own death and reevaluate his life. He finally understands, in his final breath, that “All you have lived for and still live for is falsehood and deception, hiding life and death from you” (69).
Her husband and brother, both physicians prescribe to her a “rest cure” which consist of her lying in bed for most of the day and refraining from doing any meaningful work. The narrator disagrees with their treatment and challenges it by writing and questions its effect, but every time she tries to express her opinions on the treatment her husband shuts her down, reminding her “I am a doctor, dear, and I know” (Gilman) and she believes that he knows best. Her husband, John represents the typical male and medical community. As her husband, he treats his wife as if she were a child calling her a “blessed little goose” and “little girl ”. As her physician, he ignores her pleas and puts his wants over her needs because he believes that he knows best.
...roduction of Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Vol. 44 it is stated that “Ivan Ilych’s passage from life to death also entails a passage from falseness to truth…” (326). One could also look at this in a different light. From a physical perspective Ivan does go from life to death, from perfection to imperfection, but from a spiritual perspective it is actually the opposite. It takes the death of Ivan’s physical self to finally see what is important, his spirituality, his ‘divine spark.’ This, he finally realizes, is what true perfection is. Hence, Ivan is able to see past the falseness of conformity in the end and no longer fear death.