Tag: Literary Vignettes
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The illusion of rainbows
Bryant PhanPalo Alto, California, United States The street lamps in my neighborhood flicker in Technicolor before shutting off. A glimmer of orange surrounding the houses outside the window catches my eye. The outline of each house turns grey before imprinting a series of geometrical shapes in the back of my mind. My father obsessively keeps…
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The doctor’s revenge in Jules Verne’s Mathias Sandorf
Dr. Antekirtt is immensely clever and immensely rich. He owns an island off the coast of Libya and has surrounded it with tall ramparts to make it impregnable. He employs a large retinue of attendants and has agents and spies in many countries. His fast electric ships crisscross the Mediterranean at great speed. His practice…
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Edgar Allen Poe and The Masque of the Red Death
The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially…
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The real Monte Cristo
The father of Alexandre Dumas (Père), famous author of The Count of Monte Cristo and of The Three Musketeers, was the son of a French nobleman and a black Caribbean slave. During the turmoil of the French Revolution, Alex Dumas, for that was the name he adopted, rose through the ranks and became the first…
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Gulliver’s visit to the Academy of Lagado
When Lemuel Gulliver left his beloved wife and children in August 1706 to undertake a sea voyage to the East Indies, his ship was boarded by pirates who set him adrift in a small canoe with only four days’ provisions. By skillful navigation he managed to land in the country of Balnibarbi and was able…
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Madame Bovary: The clubfoot operation
Charles Bovary is a country medical practitioner, mediocre, a simple man, not the brightest, but not unambitious. He reads that a simple tendon cutting operation could cure the village stable boy’s club foot, perhaps also bringing recognition to himself and celebrity to the village. At night he studies, trying to work things out. Is it…
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Doctor in the House
How strange and distant the world of Doctor in the House must appear to the present day generation. It was a world in which medical students purchased skeletons, not laptops; microscopes, not handhelds. They smelled of formaldehyde, dissected cadavers, and performed autopsies. To survive they washed dishes, drove cabs, visited pawnbrokers. Rugby and beer was…
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The physician in spite of himself (Molière)
Le Médecin Malgré Lui (The Physician in Spite of Himself) is written by the French playwright Molière (1622-1673). In the play, Martine, recently beaten by her husband, seeks revenge by convincing two servants (who are seeking a doctor for their master’s daughter) that her husband Sganarelle is a great physician—with one catch. Even though he…