Journal Analysis

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Journal Analysis Characterization The narrator is presented as an exhausted person and jumpy when she learns about the man with maggots in his mouth. However, she is industrious, tries to attend to patients in a limited time, and is also supportive of the doctor. On her part, Dr. Whistler is negligent and not empathetic. It was through her acts of negligence that the patient was infested with maggots in the mouth (Huyler, 2009). She is also authoritative, as seen in how she instructs nurses on how to manage the patient.

Motif The motive behind the story is to paint an image of sorrow and unprofessionalism in how patients are treated within a hospital setting. The focus is on the case of a patient with maggots in the mouth. Also, nurses are painted as exhausted due to pressure at the workstation. The narrator says, “Her patient lay in his darkened room, heavily sedated on the ventilator”

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(Huyler, 2009). The room is dark, and the patient is extremely sedate, a condition he has been unattended for several days, leading to a maggot infestation. One could also smell the odor of the body of the nurse, and the shoes were wet, underlining the unprofessionalism on the side of the medics.

Themes The general themes are lack of empathy and negligence in the medical field. The story is focused on a neglected male patient who got infested with maggots (Huyler, 2009). The medics had overlooked his condition, and even when they finally attended to him, they turned him into a spectacle for more healthcare service professionals and learners to watch.

Settings The story is settings in a hospital where health service providers are grappling with an influx of patients with limited human resources during the early hours of Sunday. The narrator states, "It was early on Sunday morning, and the trauma team had been shuffling around the surgical ICU for an hour…” (Huyler, 2009). The settings emphasize the area of focus, the hospital, and the handling of patients.

Irony The story uses irony as a stylistic device to communicate the underlying message the author wants to communicate to the audience. Situational iron is applied in how medics neglect patients and act unprofessionally. The narrator says, "After two weeks, he was getting better, and for the past few days, we had virtually ignored him" (Huyler, 2009). Here, a patient is supposed to get the best services but gets the worst, leading to maggot attacks in his mouth. It is also ironic

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that the patient did not receive empathy, and his privacy was breached when nurse students filled the room he was in, and he was later referred to as the maggot man.

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Reference Huyler, F. (2009). The blood of strangers: Stories from emergency medicine. University of California Press.