My Own Country.
Using informal writing, put down your thoughts in regards to ONE (1) of the following prompts:
1. Verghese describes the early eighties before AIDS had spun out of control, as “a time of unreal and unparalleled confidence, bordering on conceit, in the Western medical world,” [p. 24] in which doctors felt they had achieved “mastery over the human body” [p. 25]. How does the reality of AIDS undermine this ultra-modern, technological ideal of medicine? How does Vergheses idea of the doctors role change during the course of the narrative? Do you believe that his turning back toward the older ideal of treating the whole patient, body and soul, might be a harbinger of a general medical trend?
2. When Verghese arrives in Johnson City, he says, “I knew no openly gay men. I only knew the stereotype” [p. 23]. What changes does his attitude toward homosexual men undergo during his years at the Miracle Center? How does Vergheses initial perception of himself as an outsider in Johnson City make him especially sensitive to his patients problems with their families and community?
3. Johnson City in the mid-eighties is “a place where Jerry Falwells pronouncement that homosexuals would one day be utterly annihilated and there will be a celebration in heaven was taken as a self-evident truth” [p. 56]. Yet when AIDS strikes people they love, many inhabitants of Johnson City prove remarkably supportive. How does their personal contact with the disease work to falsify the “gay” stereotype they previously held? Does Verghese, simultaneously, succeed in breaking stereotypes about “Falwell country” that readers themselves might hold? What other stereotypes does Verghese undermine in his story?
WORD COUNT: 700
