Individuality, Pain, and Imagination: the Relationship of the World and People HA ODU O F E NG
Are we all alone? Elaine Scarry answers this question in her book The Body in Pain – she separates the world of individuals from the outside world through pain. “Intense pain is world-destroying”, she writes (Scarry, The Body in Pain 29). The world here doesn’t refer to the natural world or earth, but to the inner world of an individual, which includes the bridge that connects the world of that individual and the outside world – language. The absence of language illustrates the inexpressibility of the pain, which in fact extends to the unsharability of the destruction of an individual’s world. The physical distance between others and the one in pain might only be a “radius of several feet”, yet the pain “splits(s) between one’s sense of one’s own reality and the reality of other persons” (Scarry, The Body in Pain 4). Therefore, every individual is in fact isolated from the outside world. As pain is the most extreme sensation, it destroys everything within the world of an individual – even time becomes meaningless. This destruction also destroys the connection between the individual world and the outside world, namely language, making the pain inexpressible. Scarry shows the inexpressibility of pain by referring to the absence of language of pain. Since language serves as the bridge between one individual and the outside world, the absence of the “language of pain” signifies the absence of the connection between the inner world of an individual and the outside world when pain destructs the inner world – the pain drowns the person, yet the only thing others see is the distorted facial expression of the one in pain (Scarry, The Body in Pain 6). Although Scarry identifies attempts from the outside world to approach the one in pain by providing examples in which the one in pain needs another person to speak on behalf of them, “the
INDIVIDUALITY, PAIN, AND IMAGINATION: THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE WORLD AND PEOPLE
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