Alexander

• William Dean Howells: 'What the American public wants in the theater is tragedy with a happy ending'
• A story of triumph can offer hope, inspiration, and a model for how to act in the face of serious illness or accident
• Not everyone feels positive about triumph narratives, some find them a denial of their situation
• Most people with a serious illness or injury are in a state of emergency, struggling to come to terms with their condition
• Writers of triumph narratives tend to gloss over the continuing difficulties of the experience and impose retrospectively a story of triumph
• Most people have a complicated reaction to triumph stories, even if they ring false, they hold an attraction
• Embracing the triumph narrative serves various psychological functions, including avoiding the fact that suffering may serve no apparent purpose
• The media bombards us with different variations on the triumph narrative, insisting on overcoming bodily imperfections and deviations from the norm
• As a culture, we hide suffering and insist on optimism, silencing those who hurt, complain, or give up
• By subscribing insistently to the narrative of triumph, we participate in a denial of mortality
• Hospital customs and routines may unintentionally keep the patient from telling a story different from that of triumph
• Technical medical terminology replaces an honest acknowledgment of the emotional toll serious illness and injury inflict
• Some doctors avoid asking their patients how they feel or employ the vocabulary of triumph, assuring themselves the patient will recover
• Insurance companies may encourage doctors to see a fixed number of patients per hour, leading doctors to avoid asking open-ended questions to keep encounters short
• Christina Middlebrook's mother: '“My mother tells me that I am not thinking right. She says that. Aloud. Over the phone. To me, her daughter. I am not thinking right! She tells me that I should focus on the percentage of patients who make it three years.”'
• Marjorie Williams: '“someone tried to cheer me up by reciting the happy tale of a sister-in-law’s cousin who had liver cancer but now he’s eighty and he hasn’t been troubled by it in forty years. I wanted to scream, DON’T YOU KNOW HOW SICK I AM?”'
• Friends or relatives may offer stories of recoveries from serious illness, even if the recovery is from a different disease, in an attempt to set things right and reinstall denial
• Margaret Edson: '“Hi. How are you feeling today? Great. That’s just great.”'
• In American culture, the narrative of triumph functions as a kind of myth
• When discussing dying

  Insist on a cheerful tone and ignore emotional suffering
• American culture: 'The narrative of triumph functions as a kind of myth: a belief given uncritical acceptance by the members of a group especially in support of existing or traditional practices and institutions. It is also used to designate a story, belief or notion commonly held to be true but utterly without factual basis.'
• Triumph narrative


  Myth that those who are ill can confront their illness as a battle, do so with courage, and finally triumph and share the lessons they have learned
• Triumph narrative incorporates or makes reference to


  • Christian story of salvation, Horatio Alger myth, New Age myth, myth of the beautiful sufferer
• Christian story

  Jesus rises from the dead, his body is restored to wholeness, his suffering results in redemption
• Christian story

  Depiction of triumph over physical suffering and restoration of the body to its former state is often implicit in narratives of contemporary illness
• Christian story

  Bestows meaning on experiences that might otherwise seem random and senseless, offers hope and eternal life as an alternative to loss and despair, places one imaginatively in the future and gives meaning to the experience of bodily pain, offers comfort of expected resolution and a happy ending
• Shape of most personal memoirs

  Religious narrative of the seventeenth century: crisis, prolonged ordeal, blessed certainty of salvation or survivorhood
• Richard Seltzer's book "Raising the Dead"


  Adheres to the Christian story, alludes to the Resurrection, frames the anomalous physical event as a resurrection story for dramatic appeal
• Speaker: 'Quote'
• Shaping a story as a resurrection

  The climax occurs at the moment he seemed to stop breathing and then the plot unfolds from the point minutes later when his breathing resumes
• Triumph-over-illness narrative


  Contains echoes of the Horatio Alger myth
• Horatio Alger myth elements

  • Protagonist rises from poverty to achieve wealth and a place in society by dint of hard work and moral rectitude
• Triumph narrative


  The sufferer who works hard at recovery will be rewarded with survival or peace of mind
• Distinctly American myth

  Expresses a belief in progress toward a better future and in the efficacy of an optimistic attitude
• Many contemporary writers direct their wrath at the New Age myth for its oversimplification and hubris
• Some writers find gallows humor in the widespread cultural acceptance of the New Age myth
• Christopher Reeve, a quadriplegic as the result of a fall from a horse, noted that some New Age healers simply announce a cure when in fact there is none
• Reeve did reclaim some movement, but it was minimal and the result of endless hours of physical therapy requiring the services of many professionals.
• Reeve contemplated suicide early on in dealing with his paralysis and his future as a quadriplegic.
• The myth of the beautiful sufferer suggests that a person can remain physically beautiful even when ravaged by illness.