Discussion Topic
Themes of life, death, and literary references in When Breath Becomes Air
Summary:
When Breath Becomes Air explores themes of life and death through the author's journey from a neurosurgeon to a terminal cancer patient. Literary references enrich the narrative, drawing parallels between literature and the human experience, emphasizing the value of life and the inevitability of death.
Which literary works are referenced by Paul Kalanithi in When Breath Becomes Air?
Paul Kalanithi’s moving memoir When Breath Becomes Air, which Kalanithi wrote while dying of cancer in his thirties, is peppered with references to and quotes from other works of literature. Kalanithi, who was trained as a neurosurgeon, earned degrees in literature and philosophy at Stanford and Cambridge before enrolling in medical school at Yale. His lifelong love of reading was encouraged from an early age by his mother, who gave him books recommended for students planning to take the SATs. Although Kalanithi eventually decided to seek answers to his questions about the meaning of life and death in science and medicine, his memoir shows that his earlier passions remained important touchstones for him. The title itself is a reference to “Caelica 83,” a poem by Elizabethan poet Baron Brooke Fulke Greville. Kalanithi also begins each section of the book with an epigraph, quoting from T. S. Eliot’s poem “Whispers of Immortality,” the King James Bible, and Montaigne’s essay “That to Study Philosophy Is to Learn to Die.” Kalanithi’s favorite book was Sir Thomas Browne’s 1643 spiritual memoir Religio Medici (The Religion of a Doctor), which he describes his teacher Shep Nuland as having quoted on his deathbed. Other classic works Kalanithi references include (but are not limited to) Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.
How does Paul Kalanithi explore life and death in When Breath Becomes Air?
Life and death are the central themes of the memoir When Breath Becomes Air, which Paul Kalanithi wrote while he was dying of Stage IV metastatic lung cancer. Kalanithi was already familiar with death from his training as a neurosurgeon—he was in the midst of his residency when, at the age of thirty-six, he received his diagnosis and realized he would not survive. In medical school he had studied cadavers, and while working with an ob-gyn he had witnessed the deaths of infants born prematurely. His career as a doctor was based around staving off death and disease while extending and improving the lives of his patients, but now death had become undeniably personal. Writing his memoir was a way for Kalanithi to confront his mortality and to pose questions about the meaning of life and the mystery of death, such as “If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining?” He refers to the “twinned mysteries of death, its experiential and biological manifestations,” which include both the physical symptoms of disease and the existential perplexities of facing the end of one’s own life. When they found out Kalanithi might not have long to live, he and his wife, Lucy, decided to try to have a child so that Kalanithi’s legacy could live on. Their daughter, Cady, was born around the same time Kalanithi learned he had about five years left and began writing When Breath Becomes Air. For Kalanithi, Cady represented life and its continuation even as his own life came to an end.
Who is Paul Kalanithi in When Breath Becomes Air?
Paul Kalanithi is the author of the memoir When Breath Becomes Air. Written while he was dying from cancer, the book chronicles Kalanithi’s life’s story and his reflections on life and death. Kalanithi grew up first in Bronxville, New York, and then in Kingsman, Arizona. He loved literature from an early age and pursued the subject at Stanford before deciding to study medical history at Cambridge. He then enrolled in medical school at Yale, where he met his wife, Lucy. The two of them moved to California for their residencies at Stanford, Kalanithi with the goal of becoming a neurosurgeon. He worked incredibly hard and became chief resident. But before his residency was over, at the age of thirty-six, Kalanithi received his diagnosis: he had Stage IV lung cancer, and it had spread throughout his body. Kalanithi was able to complete his residency—which required him to work one hundred hours a week—but on graduation day he was taken to the hospital, where he nearly died. He was released only a few days before the birth of his and Lucy’s daughter, Cady, who they had decided to have shortly after Kalanithi was first diagnosed. Kalanithi’s doctor told him his cancer had stabilized and that he had five “good years” left to live. Kalanithi began writing his memoir, which is filled with moving meditations on mortality, medicine, and meaning, as well as references to the books and authors he loved. His health declined during the last year of his life, and Paul Kalanithi eventually died peacefully in the hospital and was buried in the Santa Cruz Mountains. He was unable to finish the book before his death, but When Breath Becomes Air was nevertheless published posthumously to great acclaim.
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