The limits of pity in Bartleby and Moby Dick
- Assistant Professor L Rosenblatt, Harvard Medical School, Department of Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 2 St Paul St. #404, Brookline, MA 02446, USA; laurie_rosenblatt{at}dfci.harvard.edu
- Accepted 30 September 2008
Abstract
Failures in the emotional connection between doctors and their patients tend to be reported in terms of compassion fatigue, burn-out, secondary trauma and depression in overlapping and somewhat interchangeable ways. In Moby Dick and Bartleby, Melville interrogates the culturally accepted descriptions of pity and explores the reasons for the limits in human pity he observed and depicted. In an attempt to understand whether the feelings of pity that a patient's suffering can evoke in physicians are sustainable, desirable, or counter-productive, Melville's narratives, along with that of a woman who, while living with advanced cancer experiences the breakdown of a key medical relationship, will be considered.
Footnotes
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↵i “Louise” was interviewed for a qualitative research study, “Perspectives of Patients with Life-threatening Illness” that began in 2001. The IRB of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/ Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, approved the study. All participants in the study gave written informed consent for use of their interviews in print and audio form.
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Competing interests: None.
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Ethics approval: “Louise” was interviewed for a qualitative research study, “Perspectives of Patients with Life-threatening Illness” that began in 2001. The IRB of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, approved the study. All participants in the study gave written informed consent for use of their interviews in print and audio form.
