Poem Analysis: The Empathy Exams By Leslie Jamison

Things All Return and Repeat In “The Empathy Exams,” Leslie Jamison examines the level of empathy and the way to approach it more than by just saying a word or showing some kindness and call it empathy. In the first place, the narrator, as a medical actor, tries to understand the character in the script and grades medical students referring to the trope of expressing empathy to a patient. Then, she delves into the meaning of the word that empathizing is something we perhaps can easily utter, but in fact, it is very complicated to understand other people’s experience and feelings. The last two paragraphs of the essay almost sum up the whole essay by repeating the narrator’s feelings and the process of thinking all the way through her sufferings which make her understand the character in the script, in other words, make her empathize the character of Stephanie Phillips and other people around her, especially Dave, her lover.

You wake up from another round of anesthesia and they tell you all their burning didn’t burn away the part of your heart that was broken. You come back and find you

She is caught in a state of insecurity that she would be hurt by other people. This sentence implies that she believes ‘others’ bring her a broken arrow. She is being ridiculous of blaming faults on others as on page 11 she says that “whatever we can’t hold it, we hang on a hook that will hold it.” And that hook now is obviously Dave who shares the responsibility for the fetus. She likely tries to forget that she is the one who decided to get an abortion. Dave is the one who suggests the idea, but she is the residence of the fetus. No one could physically drag her to the abortion clinic if she resolutely insists on keeping the child. Certainly, this does not mean to defend Dave against the responsibility, but to clarify that she is in company with those ‘others’ to fire the broken arrow into