Insignificant Gestures Essay

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Insignificant gestures “Insignificant gestures” is the name of a short story written by Jo Cannon, in 2007. The story is about a young man who was working in Africa as a doctor. The narrator is telling us about the horrible things he has experienced in Africa and how it infected his life afterwards. The narrator has returned from Africa and is now retrained as a psychiatrist. “I never wanted to smell blood again. Or the sweet nail-vanish odour of starvation. Or any other reek of human suffering. I couldn’t bear to witness another death”[1]. He never wanted to be a doctor again after he lost his servant, Celia, and these lines show us the metal state of him. The narrator is represented as talented and intelligent “...District health officer, at the absurdly young age of twenty-eight”[2] and he’s aware that he has been doing well. He’s also a man, who keeps his feelings for himself. What he saw, heard and felt in Africa, made him forget all the good in the world. Love means a lot to him, especially Celia, everyday in 10 years, has her face been with him.[3] He feels responsible for her death because he didn’t know she had meningitis and just needed an injection of penicillin. He loved to draw until Celia died, then he didn’t want to find time to it, because it made him relaxed and it opened up his mind for memories. He can be compared to a soldier, who’s returned from war with deep scars that’s invisible for the world around him. In the beginning the narrator didn’t want a servant, he didn’t know how the African society was, but after the hospital matron took him aside and explained Celia’s situation, with his wealth, status and standard of life, then it was obligatory that he helped Celia by letting her be his servant. She needed that job because her family depended on her, which made him change his mind and hire Celia as his servant. She slept on a
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