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 Celia ten years after her death. At first the narrator seems careless about Celia, it says: “I asked little of her.” Although he doesn’t care about her in the beginning, they have something in common. The narrator notices that Celia is paying him attention and he gives her a set of drawing materials. They start drawing together and the narrator is very impressed by her skills. The simple gesture Celia makes ends up in some sort of a relationship. They have nothing in common except for the drawing. “And so it went on, month after month, with no words exchange between us, no judgements or calculations.” the quote shows that they have a relationship without any words or without any contact at all. Despite them not having any contact at all, it seems like the narrator is having feelings for Celia. The connection between Celia and the narrator gets even stronger, after Celia one day protects the narrator against cockroaches by crushing them with her bare feet. “The carnage appalled me, but I was secretly touched.” The narrator likes the idea of Celia protecting him, which shows that he saw her as a true friend. The narrator seems to have a boring life in Africa and the only thing that lights up his world is Celia. She was also the only person he had a social connection to.

The narrator did not listen to his medical expertise, when Celia one night came to the hospital because she was feeling sick. Instead of trying to remember any of her symptoms, he worried as a friend. In a short period of time Celia goes from being his friend to being his patient. The narrator concludes that Celia has been abused and he blames the boyfriend. “For the first time in my life, desire for revenge set like lava around my heart.” The feeling the narrator had were very strong and negative about the boyfriend who, in his mind, abused Celia. The fact that Celia is moribund when she arrives at the hospital tells us that she has no change of getting better, which the narrator also knows, and he sends her to a better hospital in hope for her to survive. Afterwards, the narrator is called in to the police station to give a medical statement, which ultimately puts the boyfriend in jail. Several months later the narrator finds out that Celia did not die from abuse but she actually died from meningitis. I an attempt to save the boyfriend from jail the narrator tries to change his statement at the police station, but he did not succeed. The narrator misjudges Celia’s symptoms, which you might say causes her to die, or that is at least what the narrator feels. On the one hand, the narrator feels sorry because he has lost his only true friend and on the other hand he feels guilty because it should have been his job to detect Celia’s illness by her symptoms because he was a doctor.

The experiences at the hospital in Africa change the narrator. Although his time in Africa made him traumatized because of Celia’s death he also discovered what true friendship is like in a way he would never have found in a civilized western world. When he returns from Africa he is very damaged and he leaves his job as a doctor to become a psychiatrist instead. “I never wanted to smell blood again,” the text says. The narrator uses other people’s problems to hide behind, so he doesn’t have to talk about his own terrible experiences in Africa. A cockroach scares him one day and an African nurse kills it, which reminds him of his time in Africa. The nurse made an insignificant gesture, which made them start talking about the narrator’s time in Africa. An insignificant gesture can be a beginning if it occurs on the right time and place, as it did for Celia and the narrator.

So, it is actually a possibility that you can care about someone, without even knowing them. It is very obvious in the short story by Jo Cannon that the narrator gets strong feelings about Celia, although they did not really know each other and were very different. A true friendship doesn’t necessarily have to be built on superficial values but, as in this case, originated from common interests and unspoken agreements.