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Insignificant Gestures

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Insignificant gestures by Rasmus Møller The short story “Insignificant gestures” (by Cannon, Jo. 2007) is following the narrator and Celia, and their journey towards an unknown bond. Through the story the bond between them becomes more and more profound. We follow the narrator taking a glance back in time, when he was a doctor in Africa, and time with Celia. In Africa he had to work under gloomy circumstances, and they were nothing like in the western world. He didn’t like his everyday life between the reek of human suffering and blood. The narrator, also the main character, found it hard to see anything positive in life, and because of the harsh circumstances, he got medication to help him sleeping. But his housekeeper Celia brought a tad of light into his life, when they drew sketches every morning. The narrator is marked physically after being a district health officer in Africa. Especially his phobia for cockroaches seems to bother him a lot, and without Celia to destroy them, he would not be able to take care of himself. Sometimes when a flash from a car lights up his wall at night, he jerk awake with anxiety running through his veins. All that because sometimes he got called at night by the medical assistants.

Suddenly one night Celia became his patient. A villager told the narrator that her boyfriend had beaten her up. Of Course he believed the woman saying so, and he saw all the bruises covering her body. Therefore he did not believe he possessed the amount of knowledge to handle her brain injury. So they transfer Celia to the capital city hospital along with a cerebrospinal fluid sample. The next day called to the police office to give a medical statement, which evidently sends the boyfriend behind bars. Six weeks later he finds out that Celia actually died from meningitis, and that he could have saved her life just with a single dose of penicillin. When finding out, he tries to retrieve his statement against the boyfriend, to save an innocent young man, but without success.

The amount of information we receive about the narrator is limited. You get to know that he works as a psychiatrist, to avoid seeing a dead person ever again, which he saw a lot of in Africa. He lives, in an age of 28, alone in his own house that came with the job. Emotionally he seems to be very enclosed. Holding his sorrows close to himself, until he for the first time tells about his harsh story to the African nurse he meets a long time after his return. He should have cleared his sorrows and bad experiences long before he actually managed to do so. If he had done so, he could have avoided being retrained as a psychiatrist, trying to fix other people’s metal disturbances, instead of getting rid of his own and stay as doctor. The fact that he was actually a doctor, and he is supposed to save other human’s lives, is very ironic, when you think of the fact that he actually ruins the life of two people. One of them, Celia, he killed somehow, and he got her boyfriend thrown in jail.

The narrator is trying to find something worthy in his life, and he finds Celia. She becomes his escape from the reality and the everyday life. Without her, he was nothing. They had a very special relationship with each other, odd in some way. They never exchanged any words, no physical contact, no judgements or calculations. When they were drawing together, they elbows never touched, but he still felt free nearby her. Nevertheless they still had a unique bond. This bond grew even stronger when Celia helped the narrator smashing cockroaches at night. That is realized by the narrator afterwards Celia’s death. Their relationship was what kept him happy. But then again, their relationship was what killed her. If they just knew each other in another way, by actually exchange words, maybe the narrator could have known that her boyfriend would never beat her up, and not believe in what the villager told him. Then he would have definitely tried to save her life, differently from what he actually did.

The cockroaches symbolize several things. Cockroaches possess the ability of ultimate survival. They are really rugged, and they are able to survive numerous of things. Cockroach applies determination and fortitude to survive in any event. Also that something new is about to happen. Change is about to approach. In that way you can draw a parallel to the story. The cockroaches symbolize that even though life is tough, and that something frustrating and distressing is going to happen, you must not loose faith, and keep on fighting, because you will survive it, and change will come. That is exactly what happens in the story. The narrator survives and get through Celia’s death, and change comes with the African nurse, by the insignificant gestures and an inception comes along.

The smallest things in life sometimes become the most important and significant. The things you never noticed can become your greatest memory. Sometimes the unnoticed insignificant gestures become the most significant and precious. When realizing what you have lost you realize what you really had.

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