30 THE BIG ISSUE 15 – 28 AUG 2014
READING
SICKNESS
A FEW MONTHS ago, a flooding crisis
plagued cinemas. Every time The Fault
in Our Stars played, tears poured down
theatre steps, the salty stream sweeping
away popcorn. The Fault in Our Stars,
which has caused weeping the world over,
is based on a novel of the same name.
Author John Green worked with cancer
patients for years and wanted to illustrate
people dealing with terminal illness in an
authentic and nuanced way. In the book,
girl gets cancer, girl meets boy at cancer
support group, girl and boy fall in love,
and then – well, you’ll just have to read it.
Even before the film came out, this
novel was immensely popular, selling
millions. As well as tragic teenage love,
The Fault in Our Stars deals with sickness
in extreme detail. And readers love it.
Illness as a theme isn’t unique; it features
in many, many books. One would think
readers would be bored with snotty noses
and sore knees, as they are insufferable,
mundane details of life. So why is sickness
the centre of numerous novels?
Virginia Woolf wrote in her 1926
essay ‘On Being Ill’: “What wastes and
deserts of the soul a slight attack of
influenza brings.” As Woolf saw it, every
human endures sickness, and as with
all suffering, it can reveal character and
provoke spiritual change. Not just for the
patient, but also for those close to them.
A Girl is a Half-formed Thing is a
2013 novel by Eimear McBride set in
1980s Ireland. The protagonist’s brother
is recovering from a brain tumour and
the novel examines the impact of his
sickness on his sister. In an interview,
McBride revealed her experience of a
similar family situation. Referring to her
own brother, she says: “Girl does try to
say something about the unfairness of
his death...and at least leave some track
of how much he was loved behind.”
The story of how illness affects
bystanders pervades many narratives; it’s
almost a universal experience. You choke
out goodbye again and again as you watch
a grandparent, a sibling, a parent, fade
away under impersonal fluorescent lights.
Those aching hours of plastic chair vigil
evoke reflection as you, finally honest,
burrow to the truth of a relationship.
This occurs in Annabel Smith’s recent
novel Whisky Charlie Foxtrot. In it,
Charlie’s identical twin is in a coma after
being hit by a car. A life of sibling rivalry,
resentment and blame begins to unravel
when the protagonist sees his brother in
the hospital bed.
“Charlie cannot believe this wrecked
creature could possibly be his brother...
He stares and stares and then he rushes
to the bathroom and vomits so violently
he bursts the blood vessels in his eyes.”
For eight months, the family sit beside
the unconscious Whisky, rehashing the
past. Charlie starts to dismantle his guilty
jealousy and remembers the time his twin
was “his best friend, the person he loved
more than anyone else in the world”.
Similarly, Rabih Alameddine’s
novel The Hakawati uses a sickness to
deconstruct a relationship. The story
follows Osama, who returns to Beirut to
sit beside his dying father. He is shocked
at his dad’s weak appearance in the
hospital ward: “The cheeks of his rear
end jiggled and seemed to droop a little
lower with each step.”
Between tales of legend and myth,
the novel reveals the disconnected
relationship. “My father and I may have
shared numerous experiences, but as
I was constantly finding out, we rarely
shared their stories; we didn’t know how
to listen to one another.”
Scenes by the bedside of a dying
relative are when characters become
extraordinary, and repressed emotions
are released: guilt, disappointment and
desire for love.
But it’s not just about relationships. If
we look at the classics, Ernest Hemingway
used illness as a physical manifestation of
psychological dysfunction, notably in his
short story, ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’.
Ailments and bodily distress hint at
anxiety, fear and fury. Susan Sontag, in
her essay ‘Illness as Metaphor’, backs
this up: “Disease is what speaks through
the body, a language for dramatising the
mental: a form of self-expression.”
And before Hemingway, in the novels
of Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice),
heroines fall ill: an allusion to human
beings’ frailty and closeness to death –
as well as a handy plot device to throw
particular characters together.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, the short
stories of Edgar Allan Poe used the Gothic
sensibility of illness to point us towards
the horror of dying. In his story ‘The
Masque of the Red Death’, a mysterious
illness claims all inhabitants of a decadent
ball. No matter how much it is feared,
deferred and shut away, the disease
conquers... We cannot escape death.
Throughout the history of fiction, the
narrative of sickness is often employed.
It is a metaphor for our frailty and
proximity to death; an expression of
inner turmoil; a ploy to reveal the nature
of characters, relationships and love.
Because it is within moments of suffering
that we unveil our true selves.
by Lou Heinrich
WHY ARE THERE SO MANY NOVELS THAT FOCUS ON ILLNESS? AND WHY ARE
SO MANY READERS DRAWN TO THEM?
ILLUSTRATIONBYKATEBANAZI