Often times, writers can get caught up in a certain writing style that makes all of their following work begin to blend in with the previous one. If they fail to give attention to including both similar, and familiar, characteristics, along with differing, and diversifying, details, the distinction between each piece and the interest of their readers will be lost. Richard Selzer's “The Masked Marvel’s Last Toehold” and “The Discus Thrower” have clear similarities and differences, such as the point of view used in both pieces or differing timelines, but also contain characteristics that are both shared and distinct with themselves, which includes the condition the patient is in. Possibly the most obvious characteristic both narratives share is the first person point of view experienced through the doctor. This gives the reader an inside view of how a medical professional reacts to the tragedy laid out before them, and in both situations allows the audience to the join the doctor …show more content…
In “The Discus Thrower,” the story follows a very chronological order, moving from day-to-day, and keeps itself in Room 542. In contrast, half of “The Masked Marvel’s Last Toehold” jumps back forty years to play out a flashback of the doctor in his youth. These differing timelines serve their purpose in Selzer’s stories, but greatly changes the effect that the ending has on the reader. To explain further, the first narrative only plays out the last few days of Room 542’s life, whereas the audience gets to relive the Masked Marvel’s glory days through the doctor’s flashbacks in the second. That added memory allows the audience to create a personal connection with the Masked Marvel, thus leaving a greater emotional impact from the amputation of his last leg than the death of the patient in Room 542 does, since the reader does not have a chance to create the same
It was interesting that initially Selzer claimed that the “poet is the only true doctor” however, later on he says that writing about doctors “must be done by
The main medical issues in this novel are related to the suspicious deaths of individuals in contact with Dr. Moe Mathis and medical malpractice cases. First of all, Casey, Mathis’s young and healthy colt died of a sudden death. As Dr. Mathis performed an autopsy on him, he found that the horse ingested blue pills. He identified the pills as Coumadin, a blood thinner. This would explain the animal’s death due to an extensive hemorrhage. Hence, his death would probably be a premediated murder. Moreover, Mr. Swensen, a patient of Dr. Mathis whom was diagnosed with stage IV prostate cancer, shortly died after surgery of a cause identified as pulmonary embolus. It was found that he was misdiagnosed and did not have any cancer at all. This showed a medical
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
Many times in our lives we are compared to our siblings. On many occasions, I am compared to my brother. People say that we have the same physique facial features, and height. Although these traits run in the family, I truly only want to be my own person. Just the other day someone called me “Michael.” The burn from my anger showed on my face. “I am NOT Michael,” I screamed; I am my own person. Just as we see similarities in family members, people also see similarities in stories written by the same author. In “The Devil and Tom Walker” and “Rip Van Winkle” we see similarities in setting, male protagonist, a female antagonist, and a mystic character.
When inditing, authors incline to tell their own personal story through their literature work, sometimes done unknowingly or deliberately. Albeit some components of the author’s work are fabricated and do not connect with their own personal lives whatsoever, this is sometimes what causes a reader to do their own research about the author and their background of the story. Upon researching Wallace Stegner’s novel Crossing to Safety, one may discover that he did indeed, reveal bits and pieces of his own experiences in his novel. “You break experience up into pieces and you put them together in different amalgamations, incipient cumulations, and some are authentic and some are not… It takes a pedestrian and literal mind to be apprehensive about
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 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 is more easily available. Perhaps the institutions could have trained me better for such crises” (“When Doctors Make Mistakes” 73).
end. This essay will further show how both stories shared similar endings, while at the same time
A narrative is constructed to elicit a particular response from its audience. In the form of a written story, authors use specific narrative strategies to position the ‘ideal reader’ to attain the intended understanding of the meanings in the text. Oliver Sacks’ short story The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is an unusual short story because it does not display conventional plot development; the story does not contain conflict or resolution of conflict. The genre of the story is also difficult to define because it reads as an autobiographical account of an experience Sacks had with a patient while working as a neurologist. Although it is arguable that the narrative is a work of non-fiction, it is nevertheless a representation, distinct from a reflection of the real events. It is a construction, Sacks chose the elements that were included and omitted in the narrative and used narrative strategies to position readers to process the signs in the text and produce reach the dominant understanding. This blurring of truth and fiction is similar to that in the genre of ‘new journalism’. Although, rather than being a journalist writing a fictional piece of journalism, Sacks is a doctor writing a fictional medical analysis. To influence readers’ comprehension of the narrative, Sacks utilised the point of view strategy of subjective narration, atypical in this short story in that a characterisation or representation of Oliver Sacks is the narrator and Oliver Sacks the person is the real author. The story is character-driven rather than plot-driven and regardless of how accurate a depiction of the real people the characters are, they are constructions. Sacks gave the characters of Doctor P. and his namesake admirable and sympathetic trait...
In one portion of Gilman’s story, the narrator describes an act of treatment that her husband and physician had implemented.
This joy he used to feel all the time is immediately brought back into Singer’s life, because he is re-introduced to the person he shares the most similarities with. Other patients in this hospital struggle to find happiness and enthusiasm in their lives, and it is seem through the way McCullers chooses to characterize them. The text mentions “Besides Antonopoulos, [the other patients] all seemed very sick and colorless .” (McCullers 221). These patients are forced to resort to things like basket weaving or leatherwork because they are unable to locate these
As the story begins, the unnamed doctor is introduced as one who appears to be strictly professional. “Aas often, in such cases, they weren’t telling me more than they had to, it was up to me to tell them; that’s why they were spending three dollars on me.” (par. 3) The doctor leaves the first impression that he is one that keeps his attention about the job and nothing out of the ordinary besides stating his impressions on the mother, father and the patient, Mathilda. Though he does manage to note that Mathilda has a fever. The doctor takes what he considers a “trial shot” and “point of departure” by inquiring what he suspects is a sore throat (par. 6). This point in the story, nothing remains out of the ordinary or questionable about the doctor’s methods, until the story further develops.
In the article, The Masked Avengers, by David Kushner, Kushner describes and goes into detail about the life of a man named, Christopher Doyon. Kushner starts his article with the childhood of Doyon and how he became involved with hacking groups early in his life. Doyon’s mother passed away when he was a child and he grew up with an abusive father. At fourteen years old, Doyon left his abusive home and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts where he joined his first hacker group called the Tech Model Railroad Club. Although Doyon was very into computers and hacking groups, he was not a skilled coder. He felt that he was more of an activist and that using computers and technology was his way to get his point across.
In “William Wilson”, Edgar Allan Poe teases his readers throughout the entirety of story with hints about its unexpectedly expected conclusion. Through figuratively-infused passages, Poe meticulously leads the reader to the front steps of the story’s ending without ever truly revealing the conclusion until the final sentences. Within those final sentences, the question of who the second William Wilson truly is, is answered, immediately transforming the story from a battle between two physical beings with both the same name and appearance into an internal battle staged within the mind of one man with conflicting desires. In order to create this dramatic and essential shift, Poe externalizes the protagonist’s internal struggle by blurring the
Obstacles: corporatization (time & money), proletarianization (autonomy), guidelines (education), 2. Narrative medicine is an ideal. It encompasses active listening skills which show the teller, the patient, that the listener, the physician, is listening. Narrative medicine not only opens up space for honest communication and questions through therapeutic communication, but builds a relationship between the physician and the patient.
After years of extensive medical schooling and work, Perowne understands the need to see the world in the most efficient light. Each time that Perowne works, he takes the value of a life in his hands. One wrong step means huge consequences for both Perowne’s patient and Perowne himself, forcing Perowne to think logically at all times. In his life, this logical mindset makes it so there not time be for outside pleasures of literature and art, because it does not feed into a logical life path. Perowne’s work has consumed his life so thoroughly that it affects his everyday thoughts and reactions to the events around