Insignificant Gestures Essay

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Insignificant Gestures ‘Insignificant Gestures’ is a short story written in 2007 by Jo Cannon. The main character of the story, who is also the narrator, is looking back at his time as district health officer in Africa. He is telling about his daily clinical routine, and how he worked under bad circumstances, and sometimes had to work in the middle of the night. All in all he had a real bad time working at the local hospital, and there was only one thing that would light up his depressing everyday life. That was Celia Dimba. Celia Dimba was his native housekeeper. She would often sit in the night drawing sketches with him. They did not even have to talk, as long as they could draw with each other. One night, when the main character was working, Celia came in as a patient. A woman from the village told him that she had been beaten up by her boyfriend. She was injured and almost recognizable, but there was nothing he could do to save her. He was a talented doctor, but at the local hospital he did not have the ability to help her. He got her transferred to a bigger hospital, while he got called to the police station. He believed that the woman from the village was right, so he claimed that Celia got beaten up by her boyfriend. Therefore the boyfriend got caught and put in jail. Six weeks later he found out that Celia actually died from meningitis. He realized that a single shot of penicillin would have been able to save her, but he did not do it, and now it was too late. He attempted to get the boyfriend out of jail, since he realized that he was completely innocent, but it was an unsuccessful attempt. When he came home from Africa, he began retraining as psychiatrist, and he set the goal to never witness another death. Though one day, he met an African nurse and all the old memories started to pop up. The short story is written with a first-person narrator. It is a
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