Literature

write an argument-driven literary analysis that quotes from and analyzes carefully selected passages for support. Your paper should be approximately 1500 words, double-spaced, in MLA format. Please stick to this length. Part of the challenge of this assignment is designing a focused, close reading of the text(s) you discuss. You will need to do some clear close readings of the texts you select and you should also cite from secondary sources I have provided as additional reading, including readings either in the On Doctoring reader or on Moodle. You should address one of these two questions, or you may frame your own question in consultation with me: A) The readings we have discussed in the first half of this course give us a good opportunity to compare different approaches to treating patients. Some stories—like those of William Carlos Williams, Robert Coles, and Jay Baruch—are specifically written about the primary caregiver addressing the needs of a single patient. Rebecca Skloot in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, however, spends some time discussing Lacks as a cancer patient but spends much more time instead addressing the question of the research done on her tissues. Write a paper in which you compare two different medical professional’s approaches to providing care. How do the writers address the relationship or divide between Doctor and Patient? What do you see as the barriers to “proper” relationships between the Doctor and Patient? You may want to consider how codes of medical ethics such as the Hippocratic Oath, The Nuremberg Code, or IRB “human subject” research rules can affect these relationships. While your answer can address this question in general (that is, what function does the doctor or researcher perform in human culture at large), your response should be focused on specific evidence from the stories you choose. B) Several of the texts we’ve read in the first half of the semester--Ernest Hemingway’s “Indian Camp,” William Carlos Williams’ Robert Coles’ “excerpt from The Call of Stories,” (at least in part) Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Emily Dickinson’s poems--present the experience of others (family members, neighbors, communities) who are also affected by the illness and treatment. We see that they are affected by how well they understand and have access to information about illness and treatment, as well as by emotions such as fear, worry, and anger. Through these stories we see that power inequality within American society has a strong impact on the experience of illness. Write a paper in which you explore how one writer presents the communal impact of illness and treatment. You might consider the role of the medical provider or scientist in relation to the community. How does the story work as a cautionary tale? Is it science, a particular way of doing science, or something else? Try to be specific. Is the line between good and bad clear or ambiguous here? How does that affect the story’s message as a cautionary tale?