LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 23:9 September 2023
ISSN 1930-2940

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         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
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         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
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Plurality of Space and Time in Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air

Ms. Pallavi


Courtesy: www.amazon.com

Abstract

Narratives in medical humanities contribute to an ethical reformation of the medicine field. The experiences of patients and doctors make the reader aware of the pain and difficulties they go through. Since any narrative is placed in space and time with the diagnosis of a disease, it veers off making the reader realise the shift in outer and inner space of the doctor/patient. This paper will first discuss the experiences of a doctor-turned patient – Paul Kalanithi as given in his memoir, When Breath Becomes Air by showing how the changes taking place inside his body—innermost space—is affecting his personal space, outer space, and the absolute space. It will then move on to argue the presence of multi-layered space and time in the text and its effect on Paul. The paper will conclude by showing that the only thing that remains constant through these changes is his daughter and the memoir that he is writing. Both these entities are the constants that he leaves behind as his legacy in this ephemeral life while striking concessions with the limited time and space he is left with.

Keywords: Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air, Narrative Medicine, Medical Memoir, Inner space, Outer space, Inner time, Outer time.

Introduction

Narratives are nothing new to literature. It is a key feature of almost all that we read: novels, shorts stories, etc., and has spilled into medicine too. “Narrative medicine” gives subjective experiences of patients and doctors thereby contributing to a reformation in medicine, making it more ethical (Ahlzén 1). Narratives are “a temporal ordering of a sequence of events” as they are placed in a space and time frame (2). The narratives concerning serious diseases or life-altering diseases bring a halt to space and time in a patient/doctor’s narrative, with changes in their outer and inner space due to disruption in various bodily functions. The inner space is a projection of the character, a site of conversation wherein the things around highlight the traits of the character. For instance, in House of Liars (1948) Elisa de Salvi, the protagonist, “is inextricable from the chamber in which she dwells” (The Imagery of Interior Space 15) or in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997), Rahel on her return to her ancestral home realises that nothing has changed in the house in long thirty-one years as if time had stopped in the house.

This paper contends that in “narrative medicine” there is a plurality of space – one is change taking place inside the body and being reflected upon the outside world and second is the changes taking place in the personal space of the narrator being reflected again upon the outside world. This paper will argue the presence of multi-layered inner and outer space and time in Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air (2016) and go on to depict Paul’s adjustment with the internal and external space and time and the concession he strikes with the limited space and time he is left with.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Ms. Pallavi
Research Scholar
Department of English & Foreign Languages
Chaudhary Devi Lal University, Sirsa
Haryana 125055, India
pallavibhardwaj2013@gmail.com
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