Stride Toward Freedom
Identical Thought in “Patient” and “Topic of Cancer” Once I was exposed to reading “Patient” and “Topic of Cancer” I put myself in Christopher Hitchers and Rachel Reedier shoes and realized how humor, can be used in a horrendous situation. Not everyone may know what a cancer patient has to go through but as days go by everyone has been through a situation that cannot handle on his or her own. By reading these two articles, I automatically had a mental mage of what and how the narrator felt.
In the article, “Patient”, Reedier is trying to lighten the mood by using humor throughout the whole article. Both articles have multiple similarities that have personal anecdotes that explain their life story. The articles are similar with Hitchers and Reedier with the use of tone in the “Patient” and “Topic of Cancer” through humor, images and horrible situations. Humor can be comical in many situations, but in the “Patient” and “Topic of Cancer”, the authors indicate the reader that pain can be a wholesome situation.
In the article, “Patient” a teenager was hit by a bus and later on was informed that her leg may need to be amputated. The author uses phrases saying, “l feel like I got hit by a bus” to show his expression on how he truly feels about this situation (Reedier 166). Hitchers, the author of the “Topic of Cancer” expresses humor throughout the article in ways of saying, “The chest hair that was once the toast of two continents hasn’t yet wilted, but so much of it was shaved off for various hospital incisions that it’s a rather patchy affair” (Hitchers 88).
Hitchers is expressing how he has lost all of his hair, and he can still look at it in a humorous way (The Best American Essays). Reedier and Hitchers explain how situations like these can be engaged in many different ways. Anyone can take these essays as serious as possible but can also take them as a humorous situation. As Reedier and Hitchers went through the essays, the narrator explained how they had struggled through their situation and still found positive attitude.
Reedier uses a positive attitude by saying, “It is easy to be calm cause I cannot really have been run over by a bus” (Reedier 165). As horrible as the situation may sound the narrator makes it out to be not as bad is it seems to be. Hitchers explains how the situation needs to be in a positive way, “l sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risk my life for the good of others, instead of being a gravely endangered patient” (Hitchers 88). The narrator expresses how she would rather be suffering for a good reason instead of being in the hospital with cancer (The Best American Essays).
Both of the articles prove that you can fight through any kind of injury or disease no matter how critical the situation can accrue. The narrator shows his faith by saying, “She would make the driver move that bus, but I can’t see her” (Reedier 165). In the “Topic of Cancer” Hutchins shows, how he feels about his conditions and diagnoses with the quote, “To the dumb question “Why me? ” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: “Why not? ” (86). He is obviously looking at his illness as a positive outcome when many people look at it as their life is over (The Best American Essays).
Even though cancer can kill someone and losing a leg can cause death, both of the narrators kept a positive attitude. Both of the narrators start out by asking themselves “why me”, as the articles continue the “Patient” goes on living a healthy life, but in the article “Topic of Cancer” he is still fighting for his life. There are similarities throughout the stories showing the way they feel, and showing their emotions through humor but in the end there is a different outcome.
