AOW 9

The Professor and the Madman

IRB Final Post

Summary:

          The second half of the book picks up from William Minor’s accommodations in Broadmoor Asylum, where his is granted a lot of freedoms, including large double cell room with a fantastic  view and all the luxuries that the inmate could afford with his copious retirement pay from the army. It is about this time that he receives one of the ads sent out by James Murray, the editor of the dictionary, asking for help in finding definitions and quotations. Using this as a form of intellectual therapy, Minor takes up the project and sends in about 12,000 meticulously defined words over the next 30 years. Minor and Murray become friends over correspondence, and finally meet after several decades. Meanwhile, Minor gets worse and amputates his penis in hopes that it will purge him of his sins, although he still suffers from delusions. The last several chapter simply describe the endings of each of the major players’ tales as they all grow old, and delves deeper into what the real diagnosis of Minor’s mental problem would be with today’s knowledge.

Analysis:

          The writing style is exactly what one would expect from a journalist. Based primarily on the concepts of ethos and logos, the author gives us a deeper understanding and emotional connection to the story. For example, instead of telling the reader what the author is inferring from the primary documents he analyzes, he actually puts the piece into the chapter. As he is describing the growth of the relationship between Murray and Minor, he lets the audience read the correspondence then offers his opinion as to how they should be interpreted while still letting us make connections of our own. This not only serves to make the strange occurrences within the story (such as Minor’s autopeotomy) come to life, but leads the reader feel like they are actually doing the research themselves.

          Upon one occasion, Winchester combined the devices of juxtaposition and repetition in a very interesting way. The preface is the “popular myth” about “one of the most remarkable conversations in modern literary history”. He then proceeds to tell the dramatized story how Minor and Murray meet. About three quarters of the way through the book he repeats the story in the exact same way he did in his preface, giving the book a cyclical feel. However, as soon as he is done telling the tale the second time, he releases it as a fraud, and juxtaposes its contents with the true story that he uncovered from records of correspondence.

          Towards the end of the book, Winchesters tone takes a twist. Whereas his narration was previously very objective, it began to incorporate word like “I” and “we”. He began to add in opinions and stray from the story on occasion. This evolution was completed at the end when all the characters had died and the author began to make connections to modern medicine, implying that perhaps the treatment of the retired surgeon was unfairly harsh due to a lack of medical knowledge at the time. In his last chapter, he chooses to engage the reader by asking a series of rhetorical questions, not only about psychological ailments but also of society’s perception towards them.