Pathos and Suffering in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Emotions allow humans to better relate to one another, as well as understand one another’s situations, especially when topics such as suffering come about. Suffering appeals to the pity feelings within people, and therefore allows people to better understand another’s situation and truly relate to other people. In the 21st century scientific novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot uses emotion to show how people have the ability to connect well with one-another and feel each other’s struggles, because of the many emotions and struggles most people have, and therefore importance grows for people to understand each other. Emotion allows people to understand the
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Skloot shows how people can understand each other’s pain because of the emotions, which hold importance in how humans feel and care for one another. The cancer and the treatment feel extremely painful for Henrietta, and bring on new pains and suffering each day. Suffering proves very most common in people, whether from illness, sadness, pain, or a variety of other reasons, and the emotion behind the suffering allows people to relate to others’ pain. Suffering embodies more than just physical pain. Emotional suffering often seems just as painful as physical suffering. Skloot shows how the emotional aspect of suffering hits Henrietta when she emerges from a horrible situation, and only concerns herself with other people, specifically, her ability to have more children: “Toward the end of her treatments, Henrietta asked her doctor when she’d be better so she could have another child. Until that moment, Henrietta didn’t know that the treatment had left her infertile” (47). Skloot shows how ignorance and complete …show more content…
The entire Lacks family suffers, and feels deep emotion as they see Henrietta, their mother, sister, and cousin, suffer slowly and ultimately die. Deborah especially must endure prominent distress and misery as she has to grow up much without a mother, and also uncover the story behind the tragedy. The pain that Henrietta feels, largely passes to her family as they feel her pain as well. Families and friends always support one another, however in turn, they must experience and endure much agony because of the love they hold. When a person remains loved, the pain that they feel often passes to those who love them, as sadness and hurt always transfer to other members. As Deborah gives a speech and begins to speak to her mother, people can see the emotion and suffering as she says “we miss you mama,” as she goes on to speak to her mother and talk about how she thinks about Henrietta and how she wishes she could see and hold Henrietta in her arms, “like I know you held me” and talks about how she knows that “you deep in my soul, because I am part of you, and you are me” (221). Skloot shows how even watching somebody suffering, or feeling the loss of somebody can cause deep emotions and agony within people, especially families. Deborah must grow up without a mother, and endures the endeavor as she deals with the whole disaster of the death and the
...and the great scientific achievements that followed were very interesting to me and very well written by Rebecca Skloot. But what made it all so real for me, was the personal story of Henrietta and her family. The frustration of the family and the lack of information that was given by the scientists really made me angry. These people suffered from so much injustice, why did no one made a small effort to explain it to them all? Reading about the health problems The story of the Lackes really visualizes the problems in science before, and the need to resolve them. In the end, the most important lesson learnt is that human tissue used for research shouldn’t be used in such a materialistic way, but it should be handled with in a respectful and ethical way.
This novel illustrates Skloot’s footsteps that uncover the truth behind Henrietta Lacks, whose cells are “immortal”, which launched a medical revolution. Skloot introduces her obsession with Henrietta Lacks by saying “I’ve spent years staring at that photo, wondering […] growing in laboratories now than there ever were in her body” [Skloot 2]. As one of the chapters quotes, “Henrietta Lacks was born Loretta Pleasant in Roanoke, Virginia, on August 1, 1920.” [Skloot 18]. She went to Johns Hopkins Hospital claiming that she has a knot inside her womb, but the doctors did not take any action. After her son Joe was born, she goes to the hospital and starts radium treatment. The doctors start taking the cervical cancerous tissue without Henrietta’s knowledge, and surprisingly, the cells do not die in the culture dish as normal cells did. George Gey , the doctor that starts to send the “immortal” cells to his colleagues for the purpose of researching, creates the first immortalized human cell line that help save a large number of people’s lives. After the Lackses realize that Henrietta’s cells have been sold without their consent, they did not start taking actions because of their lack of knowledge. Skloot begins to be involved into the Lacks family members’ lives, especially Henriett...
Hence, The Wenders’ determination to protect their daughter in a hostile society, Uncle Axel’s willingness to love and guide his insecure nephew, and the telepaths’ devotion to their closely-knitted group remind us that no matter how corrupt the majority of society becomes, there will always be those who will keep alive the beautiful qualities that make us human. Thus, it is clear that Wyndham purposely incorporated loving relationships in the midst of suffering to keep alive our hope in the human race. Love is an unique quality that can emerge through hardships. The Chrysalids is meant to remind us that the power of this emotion can overcome despair.
Although illness narratives are not novel or new, their prevalence in modern popular literature could be attributed to how these stories can be relatable, empowering, and thought-provoking. Susan Grubar is the writer for the blog “Living with Cancer”, in The New York Times, that communicates her experience with ovarian cancer (2012). In our LIBS 7001 class, Shirley Chuck, Navdeep Dha, Brynn Tomie, and I (2016) discussed various narrative elements of her more recent blog post, “Living with Cancer: A Farewell to Legs” (2016). Although the elements of narration and description (Gracias, 2016) were easily identified by all group members, the most interesting topics revolved around symbolism as well as the overall impression or mood of the post.
What do you do when something gets stolen from you? You call the police, right? What about when you are in 1951, where segregation is still occurring, and where black people are being tested on without their knowledge, and getting their body stolen from them, and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it. Rebecca Skloot the author of, “ The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks” writes about the life of Henrietta Lacks, a black woman, who lives on a tobacco farm in Baltimore, Maryland. She was 30 years old the first time she went to John Hopkins to check about her lump, in January of 1951. The doctors had taken tissue from her cervix, without her knowledge, imagine if the doctors would have never of have done that? Would the Polio vaccine of ever have been created? Not only Polio, but the HeLa cells also helped breakthroughs of Leukemia, and influenza, and Parkinson’s disease. If the doctors would of have never taken the cells of Henrietta Lacks, we would of have never had those breakthroughs or those vaccines. Taking those cells of Henrietta were morally wrong, but in the end
In the story, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, we learn of a family’s hardship through dealing with the loss of a loved one. It is a captivating view into a world that is filled with grief, but with this heartbreak comes groundbreaking scientific development that offers tremendous potential benefits for millions of others. The case of Henrietta Lacks is one of the most popular and interesting scientific cases in recent history for many different reasons. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five children when only at age 31, she died of cervical cancer. To her immediate family and all that she knew this was a tragedy, but the closing of the door on her life opened up many more doors in the scientific world. A sample taken
The story of Henrietta Lacks is a very tragic story. Many ethical issues are present in the story. It is also a very great story, because of all the accomplishments that were possible because of her cell line. The main issue in the story is that the family was never compensated, while other companies, who have no relations to Henrietta and might not even know who she is, are making millions, if not billions, off of her cell line. The family struggled in life while other people were living better and better because they were making money off of Henrietta’s cell line. The family deserved to be compensated, and have still not to this day been paid any money at all.
In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many characters must adjust to the face of adversity to better their
In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer explores trauma and its impact on people. When faced with a devastating situation, it is only human nature to search for answers in everything. For the characters of Oskar and his grandfather, it is clear that the guilt and sadness alters their everyday lives, which they spend searching for answers. On the other hand, even though she is mourning the loss of her husband, Oskar’s mother is able to show incredible outward stability as she heals by helping her son on his journey. Through these characters and more, all dealing with similar devastating situations, Foer argues that the only way to unlock true healing from grief is to accept that sometimes there is no answer.
Further, the issue of confidentiality is compounded by the fact that Henrietta was deceased at the time of the breach in confidentiality. “The dead have no right to privacy even if part of them is still alive” (Skloot, 2010, p. 211). Skloot clearly portrays the issues around the release of Henrietta’s medical records, breach of confidentiality, and the emotional impact this had on the Lacks family. Additionally, she addresses the impact that failure to inform Henrietta and her husband about the medical experimentation and questionable research that was being conducted on their eldest daughter Elsie had on the family. Furthermore, Skloot addresses examples of violations that occurred with other patients of bio-medical research, demonstrating
An evident theme of grief is clearly ascertained throughout the novel. However, it can also be seen that Oskar relieves this theme and as the book comes to a close, so does it's apparent theme of grief. It was his own grief that permitted Oskar to amend the others from their grief and allow them to discover a life full of prosperity. For this reason, it is grief that unites humanity and gives society a sense of peace. Therefore, it is grief that is extremely loud but also what brings us incredibly close. Foer uses an assortment of characters to acknowledge a theme of grief that is slowly eliminated by Oskar’s uplifting spirit.
When we want to satisfy our many desires, we begin to affect those around us. In the reading “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, Henrietta Lacks seems to play the role of
In John Green’s novel, The Fault in Our Stars, cancer patients Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters find love within their own tragic story, Hazel with terminal Lung Cancer and Augustus with Osteosarcoma. While their romance is comforting, their story is ultimately heartbreaking. The Fault in Our Stars is a sad story, Augustus comes into Hazel’s life and is then killed by cancer, but that does not mean their story was entirely depressing. In Amsterdam, when Hazel recounts her unpleasant meeting with Van Houten to her mother, she explains, “You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice,” and in this, Green emphasizes the message that even the gloomiest stories do not have to be depressing.
“To whom shall I tell my grief?” Grief must receive closure. Grief has the power to make the strongest person helpless. For an individual to share their grief they receive a sense of compassion instead of endlessly searching for answers. In the short story “Misery”, Anton Chekhov effectively shows the desperation of communication through the character Iona Potapov and his mare. Chekhov illustrates the difficulty Iona faces to communicate his sufferings to the various people he speaks to as a sleigh driver. He accomplishes this through his style of writing, imagery, and the events that take place in the story.
Emotion is a vague state that we experience when we are exposed to different events and circumstances in our lives, and it’s part of the qualities that make us human .We all experience emotion in different ways, and it affect us in everything that we do, it affect our thought process our livelihood and our daily action that comes in many different way. Hochschild reading help us understand how emotions are socially constructed because in our live we always try to suppress those emotions and that we sometime rely on people opinion to tell us how we should feel. Hochschild help us see what happen when our managing of emotion are sold as labor, and what define the value of our smile and what are the reason behind these emotions.