Book: The Immortal Life of Henriettta Lacks
Option A: Focus on Pathos

Pathos Paper

In the book Rebecca Skloot entitled, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” the reader is able to identify pathos in parts of chapter eight and eleven entitled, “The Miserable Specimen and The Devil of Pain Itself.” In chapter 8 Skloot uses pathos to describe how Henrietta dealt with racism during her treatment, her miserable state of being during her radiation therapy treatments, and how her treatment impacted her own interactions with her own kids. In chapter eight, the author puts the reader in a mixture of emotions such as; anger, sympathy, sadness, misery and many more. The author tells the reader how her color impacted the way doctors treated her when she became extremely ill. The early 1990’s best describes the “Jim Crowe Era,” how the “colored” people were segregated from the white folks from hospitals, bathrooms, restaurants, and many more. Skloot illustrates how Henrietta had to deal with improper treatment because of her color, when she was literally dying. The quote from page 64 says;
“But several studies have shown that black patients were treated and hospitalized in later stages of their illness than white patients. And once hospitalized, they got fewer pain medications and had higher mortality rates,” best illustrates that with all the unfair treatment “colored” patients receive, the reader realizes that there is a very slight chance Henrietta will survive and fight off her illness. In this part of chapter eight, Skloot uses pathos to create an anger and sympathy feelings for the reader to feel about the unfair rule of Jim Crowe era.
Chapter eight of the book is full of roller coaster emotions that capture the reader’s attention and the author’s manipulation of words to develop a realistic feeling about the situation even though as a reader you are not there. The author shows how after Henrietta was diagnosed for cancer, changed her very drastically from this blissful human being to this miserable specimen in the room. . For example, on page eighty five on chapter eleven of the book:
“Suddenly her body went rigid as a board. She screamed as the nurse ran to the bed, tightening the straps around Henrietta’s arm and legs to keep her from thrashing onto the floor as she’d done many time before. Gladys thrust the pillow from her lap into Henrietta’s mouth, to keep her from biting her tongue as she convulsed in pain.”
The quote above, Skloot presents an image to the reader of how bad Henrietta’s condition is. The reader sees themself in the room while Henrietta was going through a lot of pain and feeling helpless because it’s only a story. She shows how helpless Henrietta was after her diagnosis and all the treatment that she was going through. The reader is able to foresee the future’s mournful event of the book, just by reading the description of the quote above. As the cancer and treatment is slowly killing Henrietta, the author presents how her illness is impacting her interaction with her family, particularly her children: the radiation treatment definitely kept Henrietta away from her own children. In chapter eight of the book Skloot describes how the all the radiation treatment is killing her physically and emotionally because her illness took away her motherhood. The author expresses that she was neither allowed nor able to interact with her own children because the nurse prohibited them Day to bring the children for Henrietta’s own sake. In page 66 of the book, the quote below best describes her battle against cancer and keeping her children close to her;
“During Henrietta’ first few days in the hospital, the children came with Day to visit her, but when they left, she cried and moaned for hours. Soon the nurses told Day he couldn’t bring the children anymore, because it upset Henrietta too much. After that Day would park his Buick behind Hopkins at the same time each day and sit on a little patch of grass on Wolfe Street with the children, right under Henrietta’s window. She’d pull herself out of bed, press her hands and face to the glass, and watch her children play on the lawn.”
Skloot expresses Henrietta’s urge to be with her kids but could not do anything because she is so helpless herself. The author uses pathos in the quote above to exemplify how important Henrietta’s children are important to her. She describes Henrietta’s pain physically and her pain to be with her children. In conclusion, the pathos from all three paragraphs below serves great examples of the author’s usage of pathos strategy to seize the reader’s attention and feelings in the story of Henrietta Lacks and her own struggle not just with cancer but also all the radiation treatments, battle against racism and most importantly the distress of being away from her children. Pathos strategy is practice by many authors whenever they want to captures the readers feelings and also create a much more interesting story.

the treatment put her in so much pain that the blissful Henrietta disappeared and changed her into a miserable specimen in the room. In this quoteof the book page 65:
“Each day, Henrietta’s doctors increased her dose of radiation, hoping it would shrink the tumors and ease the pain until her death. Each day the skin on her abdomen burned blacker and blacker, and the pain grew worse.”
The author uses word choice to the reader to make them feel Henrietta’s misery. She also displays an image of the condition Henrietta Lack’s is in. Skloot describes Henrietta’s condition details by details to get the reader involve to imagine themselves being in the same room with Henrietta’s throughout her whole treatment. She puts the reader in misery just as Henrietta is going through in her radiation therapy.
Part B: (300words)
In the book of Rebecca Skloot entitled the “Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” the reader is able to distinguish the different pathos that the author displays throughout story of the book. The author uses of pathos to put the reader in twirling mixtures of emotion by using proper choice of words, and she also displays an image to the reader that creates a big impact of how he/she feels, whether it is in a paragraph, sections or chapters in the book . The author is promotes pathos strategies in order for reader to understand, how characters are feeling. For example, on page eighty five on chapter eleven of the book:
“Suddenly her body went rigid as a board. She screamed as the nurse ran to the bed, tightening the straps around Henrietta’s arm and legs to keep her from thrashing onto the floor as she’d done many time before. Gladys thrust the pillow from she lap into Henrietta’s mouth, to keep her from biting her tongue as she convulsed in pain.”
In this paragraph she uses word of choice and she also creates an image of the condition of the character. Pathos is practice every time the author wants the reader to feel some sort of emotion in the story the author displays. In this case the author detailed the paragraph above make the reader feel sympathy or pain just like how the character in the book is feeling.