Narrative Medicine 4: A Modified Close Reading of Partial View: An Alzheimer's Journal

Read slowly and closely Partial View: An Alzheimer's Journal Download Partial View: An Alzheimer's Journal by Cary Smith Henderson and then see below for further instruction for this close reading assignment.

Overview:

In 1985 Cary Henderson, a history professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, learned that he had Alzheimer's disease. As the disease progressed, Henderson was forced to leave teaching. Frustrated by his failing memory and his physical inability to write, he began to use a tape recorder as a creative outlet. The recorder became his confidant and his means for reaching out to communicate not only with his family but also with others afflicted with the disease, in describing his narrowing world -- the horror of being lost in his own home, the burden he felt he was becoming to his family, the inability to connect his thoughts -- Cary hoped to help other Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers cope with and understand the disease.

After you have read the text, think and write about:

1. What you felt while you were reading Cary Henderson's journal;
2. What the overall mood and emotional effect of the journal is and how/why the text evokes this response on you;
3. What stands out the most to you in the journal? What is unexpected? As Arthur Frank puts it "what distracts you but is not the focus of the narrative?"
4. Identify the silences in the text. What is unsaid? Whose voices and perspectives are included? Whose are left out?
5. Note any important images in the text, metaphors, similes, and other literary devices.

I've borrowed (and modified some) these questions from Josephine EnsignLinks to an external site., who has offered a more relaxed version of the academic exercise of a close reading, and I find it works nicely with this text. Her version promotes a quieter, more contemplative approach.