Ice Cream and Corpses

Here are today’s Wonderful Words:

I slipped out of the trauma bay just as the family was brought in to view the body. Then I remembered: my Diet Coke, my ice cream sandwich…and the sweltering heat of the trauma bay. With one of the ER residents covering for me, I slipped back in, ghostlike, to save the ice cream sandwich in front of the corpse of the son I could not.

When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi, page 83

Background

When Breath Becomes Air is a memoir about Paul Kalanithi’s journey from neurosurgeon to cancer patient and his evolving understanding of life and death. His philosophy was born from several distinct stages in his life: English student, philosophy student, medical student, medical resident, and cancer patient. These sentences are deep in the section of his life as a medical resident when a 22 year old male arrives at the emergency room after a motorcycle accident with severe head trauma.

What makes it wonderful?

I’m not sure wonderful is the right word to describe this writing.

Powerful, emotional, masterful? Yes. And I guess that’s what I’m going for as much as wonderful.

But what makes this writing so good is how it shares Kalanithi’s shifting perspective on death. A perspective shaped by his unique experiences.

For most people, this experience would be terribly traumatic. But for Kalanithi, it was part of his work day. It interrupted his lunch, and caused him the inconvenience of a melted ice cream sandwich.

In reading these words, we realize how season tickets to the grim reaper’s theater can make a person quite cavalier when it comes to death. That’s exactly what Kalanithi wants the reader to experience. It’s what he experienced, and he’s sharing that with us so we can better understand him.

And although the words are callous, he’s still self-aware. In the next paragraph, he writes,

I wondered if, in my brief time as a physician, I had made more moral slides than strides.

The entire book is a meditation on mortality. A manual for dealing with death. And the insights are served like courses of a fancy meal—distinct yet complementary. This may not be our favorite course, but the meal would be incomplete without it.

Let's get technical

Kalanithi used juxtaposition to help make his point in this paragraph.

Juxtaposition is when you place two things side by side to highlight the contrast between them.

In this case, an ice cream sandwich and a corpse.

He saved the ice cream sandwich—even revived it from nearly being lost. But the corpse? The mere fact that it was a corpse means he didn’t save it.

But the more powerful contrast for me was the value of the ice cream sandwich next to the value of the dead body. An ice cream is dispensable. If it melts, oh well. Buy another for two dollars. But a human being? Nothing is more valuable than a life. And once it’s lost, it can never be replaced.

Kalanithi put these two things next to each other—in clear juxtaposition—so the reader can feel the dissonance. The sandwich and the corpse couldn’t be further apart in value. But in his mind—in this moment—they were nearly the same.

In so doing, he beautifully makes his point. Death becomes but a minor event when you experience it every day.

You can use many tactics to make a point, but when that point needs to be powerful, juxtaposition should be the only tool in your box.

Happy writing,

Joe

P.S. Want another example of juxtaposition? Here’s a crazy one about the Uber Killer.