With only a mind to think and a mouth to speak, Ken cleverly uses them as his weapons. While talking to Dr. Travers he says, “If you’re clever and sane enough to put up an invincible case for suicide, it demonstrates you ought not to die”. He describes this as a ‘Catch 22’ which means that if you can argue well then you should not die. He makes up his own mind when coming to a decision but then he is not allowed to act on it. He is very capable of thinking and deciding on his own but due to his physical condition, the doctors see him differently and not like a normal person. For example when he is given injections, he decides against it but then he can’t really stop being injected. Injections dull his conscience so the only part of his body that can function is now ceased. It is easy for the doctors but it isn’t for him.
Being a patient, he is seen as a patient and not as a normal person. The doctors of the medical profession are too professional with their work and keep a distance between the patients and themselves. Ken feels detached and not part of the group. For example when Ken asks Mrs. Boyle a personal question, she refrains to answer. Ken says “When I
say something really awkward you just pretend I haven’t said anything at all.” This shows that he is frustrated with the fact that everybody around him is treating him professionally. People don’t respond to his questions properly the way they should,
neither do they respond to what he really needs. The only person who is personal to him is John, but Kay, the new nurse is between the two. She wants to be personal but is cautious due to her professional training. He has become an object of scientific virtuosity. His fate is to become a medical achievement. It is valuable to the doctors but to Ken it is like as if he is not leading his own life.
“…Everything is geared just to keep my brain active, with no real possibility of it ever being able to direct anything. As far as I can see, that is an act of deliberate cruelty”. He believes that the hospital is treating him cruelly. He is unhappy because he is not given any control over his decisions. The medical staffs think that he is incapable of deciding on his own which is not true because he is perfectly fit mentally. He feels that with lack of control, he won’t be able to direct anything and so there won’t be any direction to his life. His conclusion of death is the only way out of his problem.
On the other hand, the doctors being a part of the optimism industry are arguing to save Ken’s life. Their ambition is to save life and not destroy it. They are using their experience and knowledge in the medical field to state that there is hope that Ken can recover. The doctors are relying on time to hope that within the near future the development in medical technology may allow them to cure Ken.
Mrs. Boyle says to Ken, “They (patients) find a new way of life”. She is very hopeful and believes optimistically that patients will some day be presented with a new life that will enlighten their spirit. She believes all can achieve this if only they keep trying.
Ken is given drugs to help cure his illness even though he doesn’t want to take them. The doctors believe that giving drugs to Ken will calm him down, and make him feel better. The drugs have effect on his conscience and it depresses Ken because it takes away his only option open to him, his thinking. He can feel the drugs but the doctors cannot. He is like an object which is experimented on all the time. A successful experiment would mark a grand step of achievement in the medical field. The doctors feel proud of themselves and their successes. They like to feel more powerful and superior to their patients, for example when Dr. Travers says to Ken, “Your knowledge of anatomy may be excellent, but what’s your neurology like, or your dermatology, endocrinology, urology and so on”. This shows that they like to keep these pieces information to themselves because they feel that patients are not capable of learning or understanding these complicated terms used by the medical profession.
The doctors’ main argument is just that they are using their experience and knowledge to state that there are high hopes in Ken’s recovery. They want victory as well as Ken because the reason they became doctors was to help people and so being not able to achieve their goal affects them slightly too in some ways.
My personal opinion on this subject is that I believe Ken should be released from the hospital. The hospital may present optimistic arguments of Ken’s probable cure in future but I feel that the future for Ken solely depends on him and so if he has chosen his path in life, let it be. If he has to live in hope for the rest of his life then it is better he is faced with death as it has to come around anyway. If he was happy living hopefully in
hospital, then it’s a different matter but why does he have to stay in hospital if he’s suffering. His future is indefinite and his presence in the hospital doesn’t much affect the lives of medical staffs as they have to stick being professional. So, his absence in hospital
won’t do much change to the doctors either because they have to continue with their life and their goal to save others. However him being able to implement his own choice of death makes him happy, may be because he doesn’t have to deal with the pain anymore and him being given the power to exercise this choice makes him feel he has regained control over his decision making him feel more powerful to himself for the last time of his life and well, ‘whose life is it anyway?’.
