Selzer: Building Vocabulary

1. Selzer: Building Vocabulary • 1. Japanese: miniature tree or landscape • 2. French: a hiding place • 3. French: a bastardization of “quelque chose”: delicacies, toys, trifles

2. Selzer:Ideas • 1. To assemble more fully evidence about his patient. • 2. At first glance he has “the appearance of vigor and good health” , but then we see that his skin is sickly brown from his disease, presumably cancer. He says that his eyes are “looking inward.” Because in his initial actions he is silent, but then he asks Selzer for the time.

3. Selzer: Ideas • 3. A horrible peacefulness—that is, the disease which will soon lay him to rest. • 4. He has “no get-well cards, small, private caches of food, day-old flowers, slippers, all the usual kick-shaws of the sickroom.

4. Selzer: Ideas • 5. He wants the doctor to bring a pair of shoes. This is a kind of bitter self-mockery because he is legless and on his deathbed. • 6. Presumably from frustration, bitterness, to attract attention, and to demonstrate some final potency.

5. Selzer: Ideas • 7. Because she feels he has a nasty temper and he is difficult to care for. • 8. He has a kind of wonder and pity about him. Selzer is constantly “a spy looking for secrets” from his patients.

6. Selzer: Techniques • 1. A dying man, hopelessly ill, maintains his independency and vibrancy with a repeated gesture of defiance. The thesis is implied. • 2. These questions are addressed simultaneously to the reader and to the author himself, so that we may share--

7. Techniques • 2. Or conspire—arriving at a conclusion and feeling. The questions are: • A. “Ought not a doctor…evidence?” (1) • B. “Is he mute…blind?” (3) • C. “What is he…blink?” (19) • E. “Does he…feet?” (19) • F. “of when…log?” (19)

8. Selzer: Techniques • 3. (AMV) • A. “And the blue eyes…snowbound cottage.” (2) • )B. “…he remains impressive,…a slanting deck (20)

9. Selzer: TechniquesTechniques • 4. The short sentences focus our attention quickly, sharply, and dramatically. Examples include: • A. “I spy on my patients.” (1) • B. “This man is blind.” (2) • C. And then he laughs.” (34) • D. “Nothing.” (49)

10. Selzer: Techniques • 5. Emotionally, they compound the feeling of the all-pervasiveness of the sickness. Example include: • A. “It is rusted…” (2) • B. “the look of a bonsai…great tree” (2) • C. “he shakes his head…suffering” (3) • D. “the black scabs and the dead, glazed fat (19) • E. “A shard of white bone came loose” (19)

11. Selzer: Techniques • 6. By what they say and the ways in which they speak, we get to understand the patient’s bitterness, the doctor’s fascination and empathy, and the nurse’s cold practicality.

12. Selzer: Techniques • 7. The sick man’s irony—or cynicism-is a displaced anger, shame, and bitterness. The man would, in fact, love to be able to “walk away” from his condition.

13. Selzer: Techniques • 8. A discus thrower is a fully capable, strong athlete. The title is ironic because the patient throws the plate of food with power, but without any of the results of the athlete.

14. Selzer: Techniques • 9. To create an effect of strangeness, an out-of-the-ordinary environment, and ironically to call attention to the lack of delicacy in the situation.

15. Selzer: Techniques • 10. It’s a blessing that he’s out of his pain and misery; for the nurse it’s also a relief to be rid of this troublesome patient.

16. Techniques • 11. The fact that he is a spy. It is effective because it gives a contained perspective. In the beginning, he spies for evidence about the living and the disease; in the end, he spies on the secrets of death.

17. Selzer:Techniques • 12. (AWV) See IDEAS, answer 6. Rather than analyze the action, Selzer prefers that it stand as a symbolic gesture.