...Insignificant gestures By Jo Cannon. Sometimes an experience or a meeting with a person makes a huge impression on your life. They could say something that you would think about for a while. Sometimes you meet someone who leaves a good impression and it might change your life. But what if the change is so big, that you can barely handle it? This story shows a great example of how an impression of another person can change your life, without you realizing it before it’s too late. We get to meet the narrator who was a health officer in Africa but retained as a psychiatrist after he left Africa. In Africa he experienced life and death up close and that made him never want to go back as a doctor, "I retained as a psychiatrist. I never wanted to smell blood again.(…)" He left Africa many years ago, but still suffers from the trauma he experienced there and is medicated to help him sleep. He is not able to forgive himself for the things he did, "If I could peel back time, I would do things differently. But you don't get second chances." He wished he had made other choices, but it was too late. He has given up on drawing because he’s afraid to let his mind free and enjoy the excitement that drawing gave him: "That's why I don't draw anymore - I don't like the places my thoughts go to when set free." He didn’t like the idea of a servant (Celia) in the house, but it came with the house that came with his job. The idea of a servant to him was a symbol of discrimination and exploitation...
Words: 1007 - Pages: 5
...Jo Cannon: Insignificant gestures Is it a possibility that you can care about someone, without even actually knowing them? The narrator, who is also the main character, is described as I through the whole short story. The short story begins with a flashback and we get to know that the narrator has been in Africa as a doctor, and that he has had a traumatic experience. He says that: “I barely recognise the man I was then,” which tells us that he has developed since he was in Africa. In Africa the narrator had to work under miserable circumstances, which is a lot different from the western world. As a reader you get the sense that the narrator is an honest man, who reacts to the principals of what’s right and wrong. When the boyfriend is convicted falsely the narrator seems to have a bad conscience. The first time the narrator talks about his horrifying memories is with the unfamiliar African nurse, which tells us that he is an emotionally reserved person. He hasn’t been able to talk about his feelings. The narrator tells the story in past tense. In general the author uses a lot of describing adjectives and adverbs such as “small shock” and “sinister rustle”. The huge amount of adjectives makes the short story come alive. In the beginning of the text, we hear about something terrible that has occurred to Celia, and the narrator seems affected by it. The text says: “Her face has been with me every day for ten years”, which expresses that the narrator still thinks about...
Words: 995 - Pages: 4
...Insignificant Gestures Do you know how a little insignificant gesture can do a big change? In “Insignificant Gestures” Jo Cannon describes how insignificant gestures like drawing can make a total change of your life. The narrator in the story is a doctor who has lived and worked in Africa. In Africa he has a servant, Celia, who almost is his only human contact. Every evening the doctor and Celia draw together. One night Celia suddenly gets his patient. Celia falls ill and also gets attacked by her boyfriend. Celia is taken to a bigger hospital an hour and a half away. Later the narrator discovers that it is meningitis, but it was too late, Celia was dead. If he has seen that immediately he has been able to save her only with an injection of penicillin. After Celia’s death he returns to England and fells guilty about her dead. He also retrains to be a psychiatrist. In this story the narrator is the doctor who also is the main character. The story is written in first person narrative. The most of the story is flash backs from the narrator’s life in Africa. He is a 28 years old man who seems very honest because he returns to the police after discovering that Celia dies of meningitis. He is an idealist but realizes that he has to employ Celia in order to sustain her and her family. He does not socialize with other people than Celia and therefore you can see that he is very close to himself. He works a lot both day and night but in his spare time he is drawing which means a lot...
Words: 813 - Pages: 4
...Insignificant gestures “If I could peel back time, I would do things differently. But you don’t get second chances”- insignificant gestures (ll. 11-12). One wrong decision can haunt your mind for life – especially those decisions you take at a life-threatening point. These wrong decisions can be the cause of a long-term damage like Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and because of the emotional consequences; it can change our lives and personalities completely. That is the main theme in Jo Cannon’s short story insignificant gestures from 2007 – how one mistake can change a person’s life and personality. The narrator himself, who is the main character, tells us the story through his own flashbacks from his past. By the flashbacks we also get an insight of the reasons behind the cause of the narrator’s emotional trauma. Two different errors of judgements is the cause behind the trauma. Our narrator made these errors 10 years ago back in Africa, when he was a volunteer doctor. After his ten years of services in Africa he moved back to Britain, but not as a doctor – he changed his work to psychiatry. He did not leave his traumatic experience in Africa and cannot forgive himself. Before his misjudgements he had a passion for drawing, but now he is afraid of the places his mind will be when he draws. He also suffers from insomnia and anxiety “Even now, when a passing lights up my wall I jerk awake with hot rivulets of anxiety running through my limps” (ll. 74-75) all this is the consequences...
Words: 1013 - Pages: 5
...Insignificant Gestures “Insignificant Gestures” is a short story written by Jo Cannon. She wrote the short story in 2007. The narrator is a kind, 28 year-old man coming to Africa with the best intentions. This man is a very modest person who has sense of justice. At the time he thinks he can be a part of changing the world by helping at a local hospital in Africa. He is an incredibly caring man who easily gets blinded by what he thinks he can do and how he can help and when he realizes he cannot change the world, he blames himself. He just wants the world to be a better place and he thinks that he can make a difference. When he first comes to Africa he is a bit naive thinking he can be a part of changing an entire village but very quickly he realizes that he cannot do much of a difference. The house he is staying at comes with a servant called Celia. Unlike everybody else who uses their servants when they want, for what they want, the narrator is very kind to Celia. He sees himself and Celia as equals and nothing less. The narrator does not even let Celia cook his dinner for him because he sees Celia as his companion and not his servant which makes the relationship between Celia and the narrator very different from other relationships back then. The narrator admires and respects Celia and he wants to help her as much as possible. They do not speak the same language but they have their own way of communicating. They understand each other even though they never exchange a single...
Words: 878 - Pages: 4
...Insignificant gestures Love is not only to find someone you love emotional and sexual, love can be between friends. The love that exists between friends is almost unbreakable and very strong. Friends want only the best for each other; they do not want anything bad things to happen to the other person. In Insignificant gestures you experience the love that occurs between friends when you have come to the other side of the world. In the text: ”insignificant gestures”, the narrator tells a story about once he lived in Africa. He lived there, and worked as district health officer, at an age of 28 years. He lived alone there, but had a maid called Celia. He worked many hours a week, but in his spare-time, he made drawings. He had been drawing ever since he was a teenager, and he loved it. During the telling of the story, the narrator is home from Africa again and studying to be a psychologist. He says that he has change a lot since he was in Africa, and calls himself ‘a thin strand of consciousness’, when looking back at what he was like when he was in Africa. He does not tell anything about a family, despite from his parents, so he seems very lonely. He can not bear the smell of blood or any other smell of a human suffering, after he has been in Africa. He seems to have lost faith in himself, since he tells that once he was thinking that he could make a difference in the world, as if he knows he can not now. As mentioned, he had a maid in Africa called Celia. Celia was not busy...
Words: 768 - Pages: 4
...Insignificant Gestures By Jo Cannon “Insignificant gestures” is a short story written by Jo Cannon in 2007. In this short story the main character, who is also the narrator, is looking back at his hard and violent time as a health officer in Africa. We read about how his daily clinical work, were not like the ones in the western world. He had to work under depressed circumstances, sometimes even in the middle of the night, and had no joy in his position at the local town hospital. The only consolation in his otherwise depressing everyday life was Celia Dimba, his native housekeeper. She did small things in the day, that cheered up his life, and also when she sat next to him every evening and draw with him. One night at the hospital, she suddenly became his patient. According to a village woman, she had been beaten up by her boyfriend. Celia was severely injured and almost unrecognizable to him, but in spite of his medical qualifications, there was nothing he could do at the local hospital to help her. After transferring Celia to a bigger hospital an hour and a half away, he was called to the police station to give a medical statement. It ended up putting the boyfriend behind bars, because of the narrator’s first hunger for revenge and anger, for Celia’s boyfriend. Six weeks later he found out that Celia actually died from meningitis and not a beating from her boyfriend. When he realized that he could have saved her with a single shot of penicillin, he tried unsuccessfully to...
Words: 748 - Pages: 3
...“Insignificant Gestures” “Insignificant Gestures” is a short story written by Jo Cannon in 2007. The story deals with the narrator’s experiences as a young expatriate doctor in Africa and how they have influenced him and his life. The conditions in Africa when the narrator worked there where very rough and characterised by poverty. The only consolation in his otherwise gloomy everyday life was Celia, the native servant working for him. Celia shared his passion for drawing and lit up his existence. When she by an unfortunately accident dies, the narrator is crushed and filled with guilt. To forget about the events in Africa he retrains as psychiatrist since he cannot bear to witness another death. The narrator of the story is a first person non-omniscient speaker who tells the story in past tense. The story is composed of a series of flashbacks which the narrator is looking back upon from the “present” where he is now working as a psychiatrist. All the flashbacks take place in Africa and are memories of Celia and his life living there. Celia Dimba, the narrator’s housekeeper, is a native African. Even though the narrator is against having a servant, based on the immoral symbolism associated with them, he is convinced by the argument, that Celia’s family’s wellbeing depends on her. Celia is never in any kind of hard labour which is partly because of the narrator’s simple life and long working hours but also because of the fact that, he feels ashamed of the conservative...
Words: 1049 - Pages: 5
...Opgave A Jo Cannon, ”Insignificant Gestures”, a short story, 2007 The narrator is a doctor and after he came back from Africa he retrained as a psychiatrist and in a few years he will be a consultant. When he was twenty-eight years old he traveled to Africa where he was a district health officer. He likes to draw so he not always has to think about his job as a doctor which can be very unpleasant at some times. He says: “As I sketched my intricate pictures my mind moved like a firefly in loops and ellipses away from the day's work”. (p.8; l.17) He does not like the use of servants but a hospital matron takes him aside and explains: “You have lots of money, doctor. You are a single man. Celia’s brothers and sisters and mother depend on her”. (p.8; l.31) and then he decides to make her his servant so she can make some money even though he earlier said: “Servants were a symbol of inequality and exploitation, and I didn’t need one…” (p.8; l.28) which shows that he is a thoughtful man and that he cares of other peoples. When he was in Africa he met a girl named Celia who was about sixteen-eighteen years old. He was forming a very special bond with Celia throughout the story. Celia was very fascinated by his drawings. She was watching with full concentration when he decided to give her a pen and some paper so she could draw with him. He was very astonished by Celia’s drawings. “And so it went on, month after month, with no words exchanged between us, no judgment or calculations”...
Words: 783 - Pages: 4
...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...
Words: 881 - Pages: 4
...Insignificant Gestures By Jo Cannon This text is written by Jo Cannon. It is about a man who used to be a doctor and his servant, Celia, who has died. The narrator blames him self for Celia’s death, and it affects his present. By analyzing examples from the text, the narrator and the relationship between the narrator and Celia will be characterized. Furthermore, this short story will focus on the narrator’s error of judgment and the significance of time and place. The narrator wants to forget his time in Africa. He was working as a doctor at a hospital in Africa, and he has experienced a lot of things during his journey. He has, among other things, experienced their hospitality and how it works – and he is definitely not amazed: “The central hospital was a stinking hell-ship…” (p. 10 l. 97) In a way he is shocked to experience all this, because he wants to make a difference in Africa, and he really believes in him self, but it is hard to keep doing that with the circumstances. Now he has had quite enough of this, and all the people who are dying: “I never wanted to smell blood again.” (p. 8 l. 2) He also seems very sensitive, in the way he thinks about Celia. He misses her, and he want to do things over. He wants to go back in time and save Celia – but he cannot. Instead he is running away from his problems and thoughts. That is why he is no longer a doctor, but a psychiatrist. He cannot even use painting to escape anymore, because the painting reminds...
Words: 830 - Pages: 4
...Do you know how a little insignificant gesture can do a big change? “Insignificant Gestures” is a short story written by an author named Jo Cannon in 2007. It is a story about a young doctor who is stationed in Africa where he tells us about all the horror he experienced. At his time in Africa, he relates to his servant, Celia, a young African girl, who as the doctor shares a common love for drawing. After returning from Africa, the narrator retrained as a psychiatrist. “I never wanted to smell blood again. Or the sweet nail-varnish odour of starvation. Or any other reek of human suffering. I couldn’t bear to witness another death.”(p. 1, l. 1-3) In these lines the narrator clearly describes how all the death, sickness and hunger has torn him apart and destroyed him mentally. You can almost compare him to a war veteran who returns from war with scars in their soul. To begin with the narrator was a doctor or as described in the text, a “district health officer”(p. 1, l. 27). He is an intelligent person, which also is expressed in the phrase “district health officer, at the absurdly young age of twenty-eight”(p. 1, l. 27). The narrator has a big heart in the way he decided to keep Celia as a servant. At first he believed that having a servant was a symbol of inequality and exploitation, but after getting reminded by the hospital matron about him having lots of money, and how Celia’s family depends on her, he decides to keep her. He has always had a passion for drawing, from back...
Words: 1062 - Pages: 5
...B ”Insignificant Gestures” This story ”Insignificant Gestures” is short story, written by Jo Cannon. This short story was written in 2007. In this story the main character is also the narrator. The character is looking back at his time as an expatriate district officer in Africa. His clinical routines were not like the ones in the western world. He worked under some hard circumstances; sometimes he even had to work in the middle of the night. He became a good psychiatrist, and in a few years he would be a consultant. He didn’t enjoy much in his normal everyday life, but he did enjoy one person, that was Celia, his housekeeper. She lit up his life, especially when she sat next to him every evening while drawing. But one night she suddenly became one of his patients at the hospital. According to a woman from the village, her boyfriend had beaten her up. She was almost unrecognizable whenever he saw her, but in spite of his very good medical qualifications, there was nothing he could do at the local hospital to help her. So they transferred Celia to a bigger hospital where he went to visit her pretty often and one day he met an African nurse, he was suddenly overwhelmed by his distant memories from Africa. After she got transferred he went to the police station to give a medical statement, and the boyfriend was put behind bars. About six weeks later he found out that Celia actually didn’t die because of the boyfriend, but because of meningitis. After he realized that it was from...
Words: 722 - Pages: 3
...‘’Insignificant Gestures’’ by Jo Cannon In 2007 Jo Cannon published her essay ‘’Insignificant Gestures’’, which portrays a young doctor’s time as a district health officer at the age of twenty-eight in Africa. When the doctor returns from Africa, he was fed up with the disgusting odor of blood and starvation. Therefore he retrained as a psychiatrist. During the time he spent in Africa he had a young servant named Celia, who lived with him in his house, and her main tasks were to iron his clothes and dust of the floor, so it wasn’t the usual intense working hours, which other house servants experienced. The narrator is characterized by being a good hearted man, who wants to help out in poor countries like in Africa, and he thinks he is able to make a difference, but he would soon realize that his effort wouldn’t make a difference, ‘’I see myself step between patients on their straw mats, believing I could make a difference’’. The narrator is working long hours every day, and relaxes at home by painting. Soon he learns that his house servant, Celia, has been watching him paint and found his relaxation method fascinating. The narrator is humble towards the Africans whom he lives with in the village while he is serving his time as a doctor in the foreign country. He for example states the luxury of having a servant is not necessary, ‘’Servants were a symbol of inequity and exploitation, and I didn’t need one …’’ He chooses to let Celia remain his servant even though he cooks...
Words: 777 - Pages: 4
...A CALCULATOR - EVEN MULTIPLE CALCULATORS AT THE SAME TIME. THEY WILL TRAIN YOU TO RECOGNIZE CERTAIN SITUATIONS, AS WELL AS GIVE YOU VALUABLE STATISTICAL ODDS AND POTODDS IMPROVING BOTH ONLINE AND OFFLINE GAMEPLAY. THE MONEY THAT YOU DEPOSIT AT ANY OF THE SUPPORTED POKERROOMS TO GET YOUR FREE LICENCE KEY IS STILL YOURS AND BELONGS TO YOU. IT IS JUST TO VERIFY YOUR IDENTITY AND TO ACTIVATE YOUR POKER ACCOUNT. THE CALCULATORS ARE COMPLETELY FREE……... - ENJOY THE CALCULATOR BODY LANGUAGE How to read others’ thoughts by their gestures ALLAN PEASE is the managing director of a management consultancy company based in Sydney, Australia. He produces books, films, and cassettes that are used by numerous organisations around the world to train personnel in communication skills. He did ten years’ study, interviewing and research before writing BODY LANGUAGE. Overcoming Common Problems BODY LANGUAGE How to read others’ thoughts by their gestures Allan Pease First published 1981 by Camel Publishing Company, Box 1612, North Sydney, 2060, Australia Copyright © Allan Pease 1981 First published March 1984 by Sheldon Press, SPCK Building, Marylebone Road, London NWl 4DU Tenth impression 1988 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system,...
Words: 41805 - Pages: 168
