Insignificant Gestures Essay

878 Words4 Pages
------------------------------------------------- Insignificant Gestures The story Insignificant Gestures is written by Jo Cannon. According to the interview Jo Cannon started his writing in a small support group for doctors. Perhaps Cannon had some inspiration from the group when he wrote Insignificant Gestures. The story is about a man, who used to be an expatriate doctor in Africa. The doctor had good times in Africa, knowing that he helped the natives. He had built a special bond to his own servant, Celia. When Celia did not come with work to the doctor, cleaned or did other kinds of household chores, the doctor and Celia used to draw drawings of all sorts of things. The doctor became very happy for Celia. But one day the doctor was awoken by the local hospital-car, which was holding in front of his bedroom-door. Celia felt ill. The doctor was not sure how to help her, so he sent her to the central hospital. Celia died within hours of the illness meningitis. The narrator could not bear the loss and the thought that he might have been able to save her, so he returned from Africa. He could not practice as a doctor anymore, so he retrained as a psychiatrist. As a psychiatrist he could help people again, and he did not have to look at blood or other repulsive things. One day after work the doctor met an African nurse, and that seemed to be the start of something great. The narrator is as told a man at the age twenty-eight, who used to have the position of an expatriate doctor working for an aid agency in Africa. So the narrator in the text has a very powerful role in the village. The job could be hard for the doctor; he used to dread what lay ahead when he was driven to the hospital. It helped him that he had his on servant named Celia. The doctor does not know much more about her than her name. He knows that she is between sixteen or eighteen and that she

More about Insignificant Gestures Essay

Open Document